EAST Tilbury councillor Fraser Massey has welcomed news that the National Grid appears to have abandoned plans to extend a new power link by using overhead pylons on the approach and through the villages of Linford and East Tilbury.

Instead, in a proposition that goes into a phase of public scrutiny and consultation today (Tuesday, 27 June) the cables will be buried.

However, pylons look set to be created that will dominate the landscape adjacent to Orsett, Horndon on the Hill and Stanford-le-Hope and will go over the top of part of Orsett Golf Club.

Where the cable is now planned to go underground.

Cllr Massey is a longstanding opponent of the plan to link offshore power generating windmills with a substation in Tilbury and has called for the whole scheme to go underwater, around the coast and along the Thames.

The plan by the National Grid was first announced in the Spring of last year.

Today, with some modifications from the original plans, including going underground at Linford, an eight week consultation opens.

The site of a planned 1,000 new homes at East Tilbury and Linford.

The move to go underground, co-incides with an application for around a thousand new homes to the west of Linford and East Tilbury which might have been hampered by the erection of pylons.

Cllr Massey says: "There is some good news for East Tilbury and Linford. If the plans go ahead they have decided not to use the land East of East Tilbury which would have decimated our greenbelt and marshland.

"Also some even better news, they are now proposing to go underground with the cables all the way from Linford to Tilbury power station.

"The overall project still is very damaging to greenbelt and views all along the route to Norfolk, so although East Tilbury and Linford won't be directly impacted as much as before it is still overall a very large project which will have negative effects all along the route.

"I remain very much against the entire project and would prefer to see the cables go in the sea rather than across the South Easts greenbelt."

You can respond to the proposals using this link and at a consultation event at Grays Civic Hall on Monday, 17 July from 2pm to 7pm.