March 2021 LTC Task Force
The March 2021 LTC Task Force meeting takes place on Monday 15th. Items on the Agenda include, LTC Environmental Impact Assessment update, Health Impacts update, CO2 Emissions, and a verbal mitigation update.
The meeting was broadcast live online from 6pm – It is available to watch again below (embedded from Thurrock Council’s YouTube Channel)
View the reports
Please click through the pages of the Agenda reports.
LTC - Agenda - 15 March 2021You can scroll through using the arrows, and zoom in and out using the + and –
If you are having any issues with viewing our response above it can also be downloaded as a pdf file here
NB. The Agenda and reports are also available to download directly from Thurrock Council’s website either as a full Agenda Pack or individual reports. We have provided links to each report as well as detailing where it can be found in the full agenda pack below for quick reference.
Environmental Impact Assessment report (EIA) – from page 21/42 of full agenda pack
Health Impact update – from page 29/42 of full agenda pack
CO2 Emissions – from page 35/42 of full agenda pack
Environmental Impact Assessment report
This Paper covers the following items:
- Stakeholder Engagement – where we are in the process to date, in terms of draft technical
EIA documents received from Highways England. - Summary of Council’s concerns – what concerns have been raised by the technical team
to date, in response to the LTC draft Environmental Statement (ES) Chapters, issued to the
Council for comment in July 2020. - Outstanding Council concerns – Highways England’s response to the Council’s concerns
relating to the LTC draft ES Chapters, issued to the Council in February 2021 and which
issues remain a concern to the Council. It should be noted that, these concerns are still draft
and have not been through a formal review. - Next steps – programme for further engagement.
Table 1 in the report shows the varying levels of concern by the Council on topics such as Air Quality, Cultural Heritage, Landscape & Visual, Biodiversity, Geology and Soils, Material Assets and Waste, Noise & Vibration, Population and Human Health, Road Drainage and Water Environment, Climate and Cumulative Effects Assessment. The columns in the table marked C and O represent Construction and Operational.
The paper then goes on to provide details of some of the most serious concerns the Council have. It’s not hard reading through the paper to see why the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) were due to refuse the LTC Development Consent Order (DCO) application which HE submitted in October, had HE not withdrawn it.
Health Impact update
This Paper covers the following matters:
- Where we are in the process to date – in terms of consultations, draft technical documents
received from Highways England and the Community Impacts and Public Health Advisory
Group (CIPHAG). - Summary of Council’s concerns – what concerns have been raised by the Council’s Public
Health Team in response to the LTC consultations so far and draft technical documents. - Next steps – including the review of Highways England’s response to the Public Health
Team’s concerns regarding the draft Health and Equalities Impact Assessment (HEqIA) and
the review of the HEqIA submitted with DCOV1 in October.
CO2 Emissions
In this section there is reference to various potential mitigation measures, that are taken from the LTC Mitigation Benefits – Final Report (Hatch 2020). This is a section that we have some questions on, and in the interest of fairness we will submit questions and await responses before commenting publicly.
There is also reference of the Government/Department for Transport (DfT) ‘Decarbonising Transport – Setting the Challenge’ Plan, which is likely to be published in Spring 2021. You may remember we responded to the Govenment’s consultation on this in August 2020, our response can be viewed here.
We are pleased to see reference to Transport Action Network’s legal challenges in this report. More info on the legal challenges can be found on our site here.
Conclusion prior to the meeting
We have lots of questions after reading all the reports in the Agenda Pack, and will share further info/comments about the meeting and reports at a later date after the meeting has taken place.
Related
LTC Mitigating the negative impacts and maximising the benefits to create a positive legacy for Thurrock (Thurrock Council – Feb 2021) – this is the report that was referenced in recent local press articles.
LTC Mitigation Benefits – Final Hatch Report (Thurrock Council – Oct 2020) – we are aware that there are some glitches in the text layout in this document, we have raised this with officers in the meeting.
LTC Carbon Emissions – https://www.thamescrossingactiongroup.com/ltc-carbon-emissions/