Wildlife fight at Thurrock Marshes goes on despite Royal Mail quitting development site (From Thurrock Gazette)
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Wildlife fight at Thurrock Marshes goes on despite Royal Mail quitting development site
10:25am Thursday 17th April 2008 in News
CONTROVERSIAL SITE: Thurrock marshes.
WILDLIFE campaigners plan to continue their appeal against a decision allowing a business development on Thurrock Marshes, despite the fact that Royal Mail have now pulled out of the site.
Campaign group Buglife lost an original judicial review in February which looked at the granting of planning permission by Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation to Rosemound Developments Ltd, now known by its parent company's gobal brand Goodman.' Their plans included the Royal Mail distribution centre as the keynote development but a spokesman for Goodman has confirmed that Royal Mail is no longer interested in the site. He added no alternative plans for the site had been decided on.
Director of Buglife Matt Shardlow said a new appeal would still go ahead as developers still had planning permission to build on the site.
Mr Shardlow said: "We will be very pleased if Royal Mail have lost interest in this site and we hope any other responsible organisation would do the same."
However, he said that Buglife was not fully convinced that Royal Mail would not seek to renew their interest in the site a later date.
"The application still stands for the development as a whole, so they could still push this through," Mr Shardlow added.
A statement from Royal Mail said: "Royal Mail does not have any plans to move on to the Oliver Road site at Thurrock Marshes. We have been looking at alternative sites for several months."
But Mr Shardlow added: "They may not have a plan in their hands at the moment, but that doesn't mean they won't make one. They have refused to say to anyone that they won't do it."
Nick Martens, a Royal Mail spokesman, was reported as saying: "If we say that we're never going to move on to that site, what happens when in ten years' time there's a further development? We may want to move on to it."
