Council and democracy

Agenda item

19/01140/OUT Intu Lakeside, West Thurrock Way, West Thurrock, Essex, RM20 2ZP

Minutes:

The report was presented by Chris Purvis which can be found on pages 19 – 82 of the Agenda. Officer’s recommendation was for approval subject to conditions and s106 as outlined on pages 52 – 82 of the Agenda.

 

The Vice-Chair noted that the proposed new bus station would be in a position that often had traffic congestion and asked whether there were plans for this to be managed. Chris Purvis explained that this had been assessed in the transport assessment of the report which had been through a thorough consultation process with the Council’s Highways Officer and bus operators. There had been no objections to the impact from the movements of the buses from the new bus station.

 

Councillor Rice queried whether the application was dependent on the road improvements from the A13 East Facing Slip Road. Chris Purvis confirmed that it would not be dependent upon this and went on to say that the application site had similar previous applications dating back to 2011 and 2016 that had approved the same amount of development and was therefore not reliant upon the A13 East Facing Access Scheme.

 

Councillor Rice asked if there would be job opportunities arising out of an approval of the application and how long it would take for the development to be implemented. Chris Purvis answered that there would be 3,700 jobs made available from the construction operational phases of the development. Chris Purvis explained that there were a few stages in the next steps of implementation that involved putting reserved matters forward and a phasing plan. There were no exact details of the phasing arrangements but this was a requirement of a planning condition. It was anticipated to be undertaken in the next 5 years as the planning consent was for 5 years and reserved matters would need to be submitted within this time. Councillor Rice mentioned that the Prime Minister had advised for projects to be ‘shovel ready projects’ explaining that projects should be implemented as soon as possible to provide extra employment opportunities.

 

The Applicant, Matthew Nicholson’s statement of support was read out by Democratic Services.

 

The Chair commented on how successful the recent £75 million leisure scheme at Intu Lakeside had been and that the proposal would further Intu Lakeside’s development. He was pleased that the developers planned to keep the car parking spaces as many people still travelled by car to the shopping centre and he hoped that phasing of the development would not take too long.

 

The Chair proposed the Officer’s recommendation and was seconded by Councillor Rice.

 

(In line with the Council’s Constitution, Chapter 5, Part 3, 13.5, Councillor Potter was unable to participate in the vote as he had been unable to hear the whole item clearly through MST.)

 

(Councillor Potter left at 7.05pm due to MST issues.)

 

FOR: (7)Councillors Tom Kelly, Mike Fletcher, Angela Lawrence, Gary Byrne, Sue Sammons, Sue Shinnick and Gerard Rice.

 

AGAINST: (0)

 

ABSTAINED: (0)

 

The application was approved subject to conditions and s106 conditions.

Supporting documents: