County council cannot support strategic rail freight interchange

By Liza Helps Property Editor Logistics Matters

IN A WRITTEN statement to the Government Planning Inspector Leicestershire County Council said the developer has not given enough evidence for it to support the application.

In a wider ranging response for a call for evidence by the Planning Inspector following  the developer ‘s move to put the scheme up as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) - whereby the decision for approval is made by the Secretary of State for Transport rather than at a local or regional level - the county council said that Tritax Symmetry had failed to demonstrate that the policy requirements for it to meet the national planning policy criteria had been met. 

The 450-acre site was put to the Planning Inspectorate in February this year and accepted. Calls for evidence representation to speak at the Inquiry are now being taken.

Schemes such as this are considered under rules for NSIP because they are deemed too important to the country as a whole to be left to local government, but in order to be considered they must meet certain criteria. In the case of a national rail freight interchange, a significant number of the buildings proposed should be rail connected from the outset.

The proposal just off at Junction 2 of the M69 motorway near Hinckley looks to provide an intermodal rail freight terminal augmented by 9.15 million ft² of warehouse floorspace. The interchange would be on the Felixstowe to Nuneaton railway line with a daily capacity to accommodate 16 trains up to 775m in length, which Tritax said would remove up to 1.6 billion HGV kilometres a year from the roads.

The whole scheme will be landscaped and provide public rights of way and the creation of new ecological enhancement areas and publicly accessible open areas. It will be constructed to net zero and provide up to 8,400 jobs.

The County Council has disputed economic information and carbon emissions data from the developer and have said that the  developer has not  addressed transport infrastructure issues  fully.

Leicester County Councillor Ozzy O’Shea, cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “It’s plain to see that the highways information provided by Tritax is nowhere near enough for us to support this proposal. Information is lacking and where it is provided, some is inconsistent.

“I hope this reassures residents who will be most impacted by this development that our representation to the Planning Inspectorate makes it clear the information supporting the proposals falls way short of what we’d expect to see.

“Rail freight interchanges do have benefits and another in Leicestershire would be welcomed, but it has to be right for the county and our road network, and from what we can see this location just isn’t suitable.”

The County Council’s cabinet will discuss the HNRFI on 24 October but due to the scale of the development, the final decision will be made by the Secretary of State for Transport on a national level.