Gateway Digital - October Edition

October has proven an interesting month for the Thames Gateway. Mayor of London Boris Johnson used new planning powers for the first time to approve the Columbus Tower on the Isle of Dogs, overturning Tower Hamlets’ earlier decision to reject the planning application for the 63-storey development. Johnson said all major concerns had now been addressed and the revised project comes with a hefty £4M contribution to Crossrail.

October has also seen interesting progress - from both the public and private sectors - in the Thames Gateway’s aspirations to become an exemplar for a sustainable and low-carbon economy. CLG announced it intentions to designate part of the Gateway as an eco-quarter. This will be an area of around 2,000 new and existing homes, where businesses are already established and job creation is possible, which will be used to demonstrate and test sustainable technologies and practices.

Thames Gateway minister, Shahid Malik, said: “The benefits of providing this exemplar of sustainable living will be felt much wider. This eco-quarter will provide inspiration and solutions for people around the country.”

And in the private sector CEMEX’s new cement plant at Tilbury, the first of its kind in the UK, offers energy savings in the production process of around 30% and is located to maximise distribution by rail and water. CEMEX, Mexico’s largest investor in the UK, says the plant “truly shows the success of the Thames Gateway regeneration and demonstrates our confidence that the UK economy will bounce back”.

Equally logistics company Eddie Stobart has this month pioneered a low-carbon refrigerated trans-European rail freight service. Its Valencia to Dagenham train, full of fresh and perishable fruit and veg, meets a growing demand for “more environmentally sensitive” transport of goods and is a triumph of negotiation.

Transport writer Christian Wolmar, quoted in The Observer, said: "It has been a great disappointment that the Channel Tunnel failed to open up a transcontinental rail freight network across Europe. The charges were too high and the different national rail networks did not co-operate nearly enough to let trains pass over their tracks. So people kept on sending their produce by lorry. But now Eddie Stobart has cut through the bureaucracy and is getting something done.”

Finally might October 2009 be a pivotal point for Boris Johnson’s plans to relocate London’s main airport in the Thames Estuary? The previously derided and seemingly outlandish plan received a major credibility boast with the release of a technical feasibility report by celebrated civil engineer Doug Oakervee, a former president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the engineer in charge of Hong Kong’s Chep Lap Kok airport project in the 1990s. Oakervee’s report concludes that a new major airport hub serving London and the South East will be needed by 2030 and that the Thames Estuary is a credible location.

Johnson has subsequently set up a broad-based and influential steering group led by the government’s former chief scientific advisor Sir David King and including Oakervee, Labour and Tory MPs and economists. Intriguingly - given we are talking about an airport - Oakervee says climate change must be the main driver for all future development work on the project.

Of course I can’t sign off without reminding you that the Thames Gateway Forum takes place next week, on 3 and 4 November at the O2 on Greenwich Peninsula. The IndigO2 venue is close to its 1000-capacity and we have a truly inspiring speaker line-up and wonderful mix of high-level delegates. In particular we are thrilled at the surge of international investors and developers who will be coming to the forum for the first time. You’ll find full details of the programme and how to register at www.thamesgatewayforum.com – but hurry!

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All aboard Stobart’s fruit and veg express
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Gateway ecoquarter will be large scale test of sustainable solutions
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E.ON puts Kingsnorth power station on hold as ICE calls for an acceleration of CCS technology
Regneration investment returns
Operator sought for Olympic waterbus service