Hutchison has withdrawn an application to revise its 2006-approved application for a \u00a3300m port development on the UK\u2019s east coast.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.<\/p>\n
The application didn\u2019t sit comfortably with central government, who announced a public inquiry into the changes \u2013 the second public inquiry associated with the application.<\/p>\n
In a letter to the local district council, Hutchison said that it had taken the decision to withdraw the application \u201cparticularly in light of the anticipated costs and delay associated with a call-in and Public Inquiry\u201d. A public inquiry could add another three or four years to the project, time that HPH can ill afford to waste.<\/p>\n
The local council is desperate to keep the project alive \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
The leader of the council, Neil Stock, has been public in his disappointment: \u201cThey [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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 only to get a refusal and be left with a \u00a345m bill.<\/p>\n
Perhaps ABP would have been more willing to share information on its experience if HPH hadn\u2019t attempted to throw a spanner into ABP\u2019s expansion works in Southampton last year. The \u00a3150m project was held up by Hutchison\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t make HPH\u2019s proposal as attractive as it once was; the local councilmen are right to be concerned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have long-winded and overly bureaucratic planning processes taken another victim in the maturing UK port industry? Fears are that a setback in Hutchison Port Holdings\u2019 already lengthy Bathside Bay plans might send the international operator packing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-8676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viewpoint"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8678,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676\/revisions\/8678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8676"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=8676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}