Article in Private Eye – Issue 1645 – 21 March 2025
Transcript (AI-generated)
River Thames, Sea Change
The Port of London Authority (PLA) has provided no environmental assessment of the powers it is seeking in relation to river infrastructure, including deep dredging to allow larger vessels such as cargo and cruise ships up the river, a public inquiry has heard.
The inquiry into the wide-ranging Harbour Revision Order (HRO), seeking to “modernise” all sorts of rights, licensing and permissions along the tidal Thames, concluded last week. After hearing concerns from boaters about the PLA’s rights grab over moorings (see last Eye), the inquiry heard evidence from environmental organisations that there had been no strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of any of the planned changes. Campaign group Thamesbank said the lack of such an assessment, required by law, must be a “fatal blow” and the PLA should go back to the drawing board.
PLA officials told the inquiry an SEA wasn’t needed for the rules change because “environmental assessments are carried out at the permission stage for individual applications”. However, the law requires an assessment for any programme that “sets the framework for future development consent”. During the inquiry the PLA confirmed it was intending to increase dredging, “particularly out into the estuary”, to accommodate larger vessels.
However, Thamesbank’s counsel Claire Nevin told the inquiry the new HRO “would set the framework for future development consents relating to dredging and the maintenance of provision of new infrastructure to facilitate marine activity, shipping, tourism and leisure, construction and aggregates use… Given that 92 percent of the PLA’s area is covered by environmental designations of some sort, with several of these located in the Thames estuary, it is difficult to conceive of a more clear-cut case for a SEA.”
That argument was backed by the Thames Blue Green Economy environmental alliance, which complained there was “not one scrap of environmental information” provided with the HRO application, nor anything about flooding. “There must be space for nature and for us, not just shipping and commerce,” they argued.