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.
Sign up for updates
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 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.
- Nearly 10,000 pages of evidence analysed
- 75 published documents
- 25+ independent analyses
- 162 failings logged against the policy
- Over 350 pages of reports and representation
The evidence is clear. This should not happen.
The policy is unsound and unjustified. Read the evidenceConsultation extended to 10 November 2026
You can still have your say.
The Council has extended the consultation to midnight on Tuesday 10 November 2026, after admitting an error in its assessment of the plan’s effect on protected wildlife sites. That assessment had not assessed Lower Langdon at all, as our representation showed. The replacement adds a few lines on Lower Langdon and changes none of its conclusions.
If you have not commented yet, there is still time. If you commented before 14 October, your comment stands and you do not need to send it again, but you can add a new one.
How to send your commentOur own representation was filed on 14 October, by email and through the Council’s consultation portal. It asks the Planning Inspector to delete Policy SS18 and return the land to the Green Belt. It is published in full: both volumes on one page, with every reference linked, and the two PDFs as filed.
Read our representation
Illustrative wildlife photographs of species observed by Dr Lighten in the proposed build site.