DfT fails to make decision on £9bn Lower Thames Crossing DCO

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Transport secretary Louise Haigh was due to announce her decision today on whether to grant permission to proceed on National Highways’ major road project, which will involve 23km of new roads and a tunnel under the Thames between Kent and Essex.

Instead, in a brief message on the project’s government webpage and the Planning Inspectorate website, it was stated: “An update will be provided on the application in due course.” 

It is unclear whether this means the decision on the DCO has been delayed as an official delay requires a written letter to Parliament on behalf of the secretary of state with an announcement of a new deadline. 

National Highways spent nearly £300M and seven years developing the DCO for the project, which elapsed in two stages as its first attempt was withdrawn in November 2020 before a decision could be made. It was resubmitted in November 2022 and is the largest DCO application ever seen, reportedly running to nearly 360,000 pages. The Planning Inspectorate provided its recommendation to the secretary of state in March of this year. 

However, the decision on the DCO was delayed due to the General Election, with a final decision expected today.  

National Highways has recently been accused of attempting to influence the DCO decision and undermine the democratic decision-making process. 

Businesses have called for the LTC to be consented at today’s deadline, arguing that it will provide much-needed relief and reliability, and offer a transformative £40bn boost to the UK economy. 

If approved, the LTC scheme will be the nation’s largest ever road scheme with a 3.4km long tunnel under the Thames. 

The project has been divided into three main contracts. Balfour Beatty was awarded the £1.2bn Roads North of the Thames contract, Skanska was awarded the £450M Kent Roads contract and Bouygues-Murphy joint venture was awarded the £1.3bn tunnelling contract. 

The project’s tunnels technical director Keith Bowers told NCE earlier this year that the latest tunnelling technology will be used on the Lower Thames Crossing. 

It is also intended to be a pathfinder project for carbon neutral road construction, utilising hydrogen power. 

However, the search for a hydrogen supplier for the project was relaunched in July following the failure on the initial attempt. 

With the government facing a £22bn black hole in its finances, it has been suggested that it will investigate private finance models to fund the delivery of LTC. 

After the lack of decision from the DfT today, Transport Action Network (TAN), a campaign group opposing the project, stated it believes the project needs to be scrapped as soon as possible so that better and more cost effective solutions can be found. 

TAN director Chris Todd said: “The LTC just needs to be put out of its misery.  

“Even if the scheme had been approved today, it’s unlikely it would have been open for traffic before 2032 and then was predicted to only give five years relief at Dartford.  

“Green lighting the scheme today would look odd with the Government announcing it will spend £21.7bn to reduce carbon emissions, if it then spent £10bn making them worse.  

“It is just one of the many reasons why this dinosaur scheme should be scrapped without further delay.” 

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