Thurrock’s draft Local Plan
STOP Lower Langdon 5,000 homes!
Protect Langdon Ridge Site of Special Scientific Interest
Thurrock Council’s draft Local Plan proposes a new town of 5,000 homes on 250 hectares of Green Belt north of the A13, directly below Langdon Ridge Site of Special Scientific Interest.
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Photograph by Dr Jackie Lighten.
What is proposed
This is not just a problem for Langdon Hills.
The plan calls it Policy SS18: Lower Langdon (4,000 homes) and Corringham Park Farm (1,000 homes).
Horndon-on-the-Hill, Stanford-le-Hope and Corringham would take the brunt: around 12,000 new residents on their doorstep, using their roads, their shops, their doctors and Basildon Hospital.
The A13 and many of our town roads are already at capacity. The Council’s own traffic model shows four A13 junctions at or over capacity with this plan, including the Stanford-le-Hope junction, and proposes no fix for any of them.
The Green Belt that keeps the three towns separate would be gone, and the traffic would run through them and on into Laindon and Basildon.
It would destroy the Green Belt that the Council’s own consultants said should not be developed on, and the farmland below the Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) that Natural England’s Impact Risk Zone exists to protect.
This is not another Green Belt dispute. It is a legal challenge to the whole evidence base for the site: flooding, wildlife, roads, water, health, housing needs and the Council’s own consultants’ advice. Each has been tested against the law in a rigorous analysis.
What we are asking for
We are asking for one policy to be removed.
We are not against the whole plan. We are asking for one policy to be removed, on the Council’s own evidence, when the plan is examined by a Planning Inspector in spring 2027.
Before 14 October
What you can do now.
Over the coming weeks we will release what we have found, and are preparing a full legal representation on behalf of the community.
In the week before the deadline we will publish it here, with a short template, so that every resident can put their name to the same case in their own submission.
Hundreds of objections on the same points are what the Inspector must answer. One voice must be heard.
Sign up for the newsletter so we can reach you when the objection guidance is ready.
Illustrative wildlife photographs.