Controversial plans for a new container terminal in an ecologically sensitive bay near Harwich have come a step closer to reality at the Court of Appeal.
Hutchison Ports (UK) Ltd. wants to build the terminal and a small boat harbour in Bathside Bay, which lies within the Stour and Orwell Special Protection Area, but has encountered stiff opposition from local objectors.
Despite the bay's protected status, planning permissions for the scheme were granted in 2006 after the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government accepted that there were 'imperative reasons of overriding public importance' in favour of the project.
It was a condition of the planning permission that work on the terminal had to commence before 2016. However, due to a fall in demand for container terminals caused by the recession, Hutchison in 2010 put in fresh planning applications which extended that deadline until 2021.
Tendring District Council resolved to grant the new planning consents in January last year. However, the final decision was deferred whilst the Secretary of State considered whether he should 'call in' the applications for his own determination.
The Secretary of State decided not to do that in November last year, saying that his 'intervention would not be justified' and that the planning applications should be left to the district council to decide.
Local campaigner, Denis Saunders, mounted a judicial review challenge to that decision, saying that the Secretary of State could not rationally have concluded that the container terminal proposals were of merely local, rather than national, importance.
However, his case was dismissed by the High Court and it has now failed again before senior judge, Lord Justice Hughes, at the Court of Appeal.
The judge said that the original permissions had been granted against the background of national shortfalls in container port capacity.
He added that recent government guidance circulated to planning authorities indicated that it would sometimes be appropriate to grant extensions of time to keep planning permissions alive during the recession so that they can be swiftly implemented when the economic outlook improves.
There was no obligation on the Secretary of State to call in every planning application that raises issues of 'more than local importance' and there was nothing irrational in his ruling that the fresh planning applications could be left to the District Council to determine.
Mr Saunders was refused permission to appeal.