Southwark to bring judicial review over plans for 'super-sewer' for London

Southwark Council has applied to the High Court to bring judicial review proceedings over ministers’ approval of plans for the so-called ‘super-sewer’ in London.

The Government gave the go-ahead for the 16-mile tunnel, which is intended to deal with sewage pollution in the River Thames, in April. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2016.

Cllr Peter John, Leader of Southwark, said the authority had taken decision because of the “devastating impact the work will have on the lives of the thousands of people who live, work and go to school around the proposed Chamber's Wharf tunnel drive site”. 

He claimed that the council’s position had been supported by the findings of five individual planning inspectors who concluded that using Chambers Wharf as a drive site would have very significant impacts on the lives of residents and that another sie at Abbey Mills would be a more appropriate site with far less impact.

“This point was ignored by the Secretaries of State who did not even consider the alternatives put forward and simply felt the need for the project outweighed our concerns about the way Chambers Wharf was being used,” Cllr John said.

He added that legal counsel believed that Southwark had a strong case. “We are under no illusions, we are very much David taking on Goliath….[but] we are prepared to take this to court in order to get the best possible outcome for [those who lived, worked and went to school near Chamber’s Wharf]." 

Barney Holbeche, chair of the Save Your Riverside residents' campaign group, said: "It is very surprising and disappointing that ministers chose to ignore advice from the planning inspectorate and therefore go against the national policy statement on waste water which states that the tunnel should only be given consent if significant adverse impacts on health and quality of life from noise have been avoided.

“The credibility of the planning process is in doubt because of this decision on the tunnel and we therefore welcome the decision of Southwark Council to question the legalities of it." 

Angus Walker, partner at Bircham Dyson Bell and writer of the Planning Act 2008 blog hosted on Local Government Lawyer, said the Southwark claim covered two grounds relating to noise and two on the choice of Chambers Wharf (in Southwark) for launching the tunnel boring machines towards Abbey Mills rather than the other way round. 

“Paragraph 4.9.9 of the Waste Water National Policy Statement (on noise) gets a mention in the first ground, and of potential wider implication is the allegation that the Secretaries of State incorrectly balanced the adverse impacts at a single site with the benefits of the scheme as a whole,” he said.

Walker also highlighted another judicial review claim brought over the ‘super-sewer’, this time launched by campaign group Thames Blue-Green Economy.

This claim “alleges that pre-application consultation was only considered as a procedural hurdle at the application acceptance stage, rather than the decision-maker taking the comments into account, and thus fell foul of the EIA directive”, he said.

If successful, this would have wide implications for applications for NSIPs (nationally significant infrastructure projects), Walker added.