IN among all the heavy news in this week’s Gazette there are a few stories revealing rather huge plans which will make quite an impact across the borough - and beyond.

First up, there’s the big reveal about the Thames Enterprise Park, on the former Coryton Oil Refinery.

No less than 4,500 jobs are expected to be created. It’s rightly being hailed as “an important milestone” in the borough’s history.

Secondly, the news of much-needed sliproads to be added around Lakeside, to link in with the A13, seem to make perfect sense.

There’s been plenty of concern about how on earth the roads will cope when Lakeside becomes a new 2,500-home town.

This £50million announcement goes some way to answering that.

It looks like the new sliproads will be created at the pressure point junction between the A13 and A126 at Lakeside.

It’s very welcome, as most residents will have experienced the joys of sitting in traffic in and around that area, probably more than a few times in their lives.

Thirdly, lotto and heritage funding, totalling £1.5million, will be pumped into a two-year project to improve some of the borough’s parks.

This is a decent wedge of cash and again it’s very welcome indeed.

Thurrock as a borough gets its fair share of stick, from those who don’t any better, but these are significant projects which show Thurrock is heading in a good direction.