Best laid plans

Hutchison has withdrawn an application to revise its 2006-approved application for a £300m port development on the UK’s east coast. The revisions focus on gaining permission to start construction on the container port scheme before carrying out associated improvements to the surrounding road infrastructure.

The application didn’t sit comfortably with central government, who announced a public inquiry into the changes – the second public inquiry associated with the application.

In a letter to the local district council, Hutchison said that it had taken the decision to withdraw the application “particularly in light of the anticipated costs and delay associated with a call-in and Public Inquiry”. A public inquiry could add another three or four years to the project, time that HPH can ill afford to waste.

The local council is desperate to keep the project alive – not least for the thousands of direct and indirect jobs associated with the development. To prove its commitment, it will accompany HPH executives to a meeting with the UK Government, expected to be before the end of the year.

The leader of the council, Neil Stock, has been public in his disappointment: “They [HPH] must have been absolutely gutted when they heard the Government had gone for a public inquiry and quite frankly I am not surprised they pulled the application. We constantly hear that planning should not stifle the country’s economic growth, but then the Secretary of State for the Department of Communities and Local Government seems to go totally against that edict where Bathside Bay is concerned.”

By comparison, rival operator Associated British Ports is a veteran of the UK planning process, having experienced the highs and the lows of UK bureaucracy over the past two decades. It took eight years for ABP to get to the end of the process for its Dibden Bay port proposal – only to get a refusal and be left with a £45m bill.

Perhaps ABP would have been more willing to share information on its experience if HPH hadn’t attempted to throw a spanner into ABP’s expansion works in Southampton last year. The £150m project was held up by Hutchison’s legal challenge in opposition of an infrastructure upgrade. Hutchison owns nearby Felixstowe. ABP finally got the green light in May this year and works on berths 201 and 202 started in October.

Back at Bathside Bay, the question is will Hutchison continue with a six year old planning application with plans that were feasibly drawn up more than ten years ago? It is a very different economic climate today, the global port industry has moved on, and rival UK super-ports have had a head start. All of which combined doesn’t make HPH’s proposal as attractive as it once was; the local councilmen are right to be concerned.