Compulsory Purchase Order Powers to be used for M20 Lorry Park site
In the next 4 weeks Highways England will use Compulsory Purchase Order powers to buy the 250 acre site(Map Below), at Stanford west, owned by local farmer David Holt, according to Paul Hayward of Highways England. They will use powers under the Highways Act 1980 to do so. . The land is grade 2 agricultural and worth somewhere in the region of £10,000 + per acre. So, Mr David Holt the landowner can expect to receive a minimum of £2.5 million for the land.
Balfour Beatty won a £130 million contract back in May 2016 to build the lorry park. What the other £120 million pounds will be used for is still not clear.
The powers Highway England have at their disposal are:
Highways Act 1980 – S.239 acquisition for construction or improvement – S.240 acquisition for side roads (s.14) and new PMA’s (s.124), watercourse diversion (s.110), public conveniences (s.114) & lorry areas (s.115) – S.246 mitigation of adverse effects – S.248 acquisition in advance or requirements – S.249 distance limits (220 yards for LA’s) – Sch.18 – S.250 creation of new rights over land – S.260 Clearance of title to HA land
On the 6th July, the then Transport Minister Partick McLoughlin announced a major new lorry area will be created near Stanford in Kent as a long-term solution to the problems caused on the M20 and surrounding roads when Operation Stack is used.
Patrick Mc Loughlin MP had a £320 dinner at Rocksalt with Cllr David Drury Monk, Alistair Stewart CEO of SDC and others. This is also an MP who claimed £86,621 during the MP expenses scandal.
It is also understood that Highways England are currently in ongoing discussions – which are ‘commercially confidential’ – about who will run the site in the future.
The Lorry Park hasn’t been without its controversy. ‘The decision to proceed was rushed’ according to the Transport Select Committee. The committee called upon the then Transport Ministers to demonstrate the necessity of building the lorry park, including:
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the cost-benefit ratios of alternatives to the lorry park
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whether the lorry park is a proportionate and appropriate solution to the scale and frequency of disruption associated with Operation Stack
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the environmental and social costs that the lorry park will impose on the locality
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the value of any benefits that the lorry park will bring locally and to the UK economy, and
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the long-term costs of operating, maintaining, renewing and, eventually, decommissioning the lorry park
Interesting that Patrick McLoughlin featured in the MP expenses scandal to the tune of £86,621. I would hesitate to claim that his lunch companions also falsified expenses claims. They do, however, appear to belong to the same ‘Lies & Deceit’ club.
The lunch must have been most convivial, each regaling the others with tales of fabrications being accepted as fact. Oh how they must have chuckled at the hilarity of it all.
Conversely, they may have discussed matters of moment to the residents of Shepway.
As Vox would say, ‘You decide’.
I am at a loss to understand why this Lorry Park is necessary… We are told ad nauseum that this is to alleviate “Operation Stack”…
And yet as a Member of the EU (and likely to be so up to 2020 and probably beyond) we are also part of the single market that “seeks to guarantee the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people – the “four freedoms” – within the European Union (EU)”.
So I presume that if the “free movement of goods” from the UK to the EU is restricted by circumstances in France, then surely whoever is responsible for the cause and the failure to maintain free movement of goods, failure is guilty of breaching some kind of EU law.
Would the Germans allow the same situation on their borders? Do we not take the Spanish on when they block access to the Little Rock in the Med?
So it appears that the UK Govt is too gutless to fight for free movement of goods across the Channel which now means the UK taxpayers have to pay for this Lorry Park?
If this is really necessary, then surely the EU should be seen to be stumping up a shed load of cash for this lorry park.
I am probably being far too simplistic because there must be “establishment interests” at work behind the scenes.
“Rocksaltgate” ?