AFTER four months of waiting, residents hoping for a change of heart by Thurrock planning councillors who backed a controversial plan for around 160 new homes will have to wait a little longer.

At tonight's (Monday, 8 June) virtual meeting of Thurrock Council's planning committee when the proposal for up to 161 new homes on Thurrock Marshes came up again it was decided to defer a decision for a site visit.

And so the debate will now drag on to at least the planning meeting next month – provisionally fixed for 18 July. .

At a meeting in March councillors voted by a majority to overturn their officers' recommendation and back the housing scheme. Council protocol means that it had to come back for a second debate.

At the meeting this evening Cllr Angela Lawrence immediately proposed a site visit, meaning another deferment. Committee chair Tom Kelly insisted that senior planning officer Matthew Gallagher ran through his summary of the situation before and decision could be made.

Mr Gallagher represented a summary of his original presentation then forensically picked apart the five reasons suggested by councillors as to why the scheme, which officers and hundreds of local residents think is detrimental to the green belt, should go through.

He was fairly scathing in taking apart a claim by councillors at the previous meeting that the recently opening Tilbury2 port project would be creating between 4,000 and 5,000 new jobs to the area – which was one of the main thrusts of the argument put by pro-development councillor Gerard Rice.

He said that, at best, the port would only create around 500 jobs and the port's own analysis of those jobs had suggested less than 300 people would be people living in the borough.

Cllr Rice had also suggested that no one had objected to a report which said there would be no flooding problems at the new site – flooding has been cited as a major reason why the Marshes are unsuitable for housing development.

Cllr Rice also suggested that money would be available for flood defences if needed and the port was already working on a major project, to replace lock gates, which would also offset any potential flooding problems.

That argument was also dismissed by Mr Gallagher who said the port local gates project was not relevant and just because no one had raised objections, that didn't mean there would not be any.

Mr Gallagher did concede that there were positive aspects from the scheme in terms of the number of social and affordable houses that would be available, but said that while that was a 'fair' argument, it did not outweigh the damage to green belt.

On the issue of connectivity – cycle ways and paths linking up communities - again he conceded there were benefits but they were not significant.

And he dismissed the argument put forward by councillors in support of the scheme that the new scheme was so significantly different to one which had been dismissed by the planning inspectorate that the two could not be compared.

On completion of his presentation, councillors debated Cllr Lawrence's suggestion that a site visit was vital.

She said: "I would rather go and have a site visit and I would prefer to wait if it's safer. I am asking for this because I was inclined to go against the officers last time but I have had a lot of emails about the ecological issues and I would like to go and see it with my own eyes."

Cllr Rice conceded there was merit in the idea of a site visit and said: "There has been a lot of discussion about this site so we owe it to the residents to go and give it due diligence."

Cllr Sue Shinnock was against the site visit, and said: "The site is overgrown. I don't see what we are going to see." And Cllr Gary Byrne was also against it, saying: "I don't see why we need this. There will be at least nine cars visiting, we shouldn't take the risk."

A vote was taken and a majority decided on the site visit which is set to take part in July.