Blaby District Council in Leicestershire is to scrutinise the new application submitted by developer Tritax Symmetry for the Hinckley National Rail Freight Interchange (HNRFI) to the Planning Inspectorate.

The company withdrew its original application at the start of the month as the Planning Inspectorate required it to carry out further work on the greenhouse gas emissions and embodied carbon from the proposed highway works.

The resubmission restarts the acceptance phase of the process. Blaby District Council now has fourteen days to again comment on whether it believes the developer’s consultation on the plans was adequate. The Council sent an ‘adequacy of consultation’ document the first time Tritax put the plans into the Planning Inspectorate. It will now submit a revised version.

The Planning Inspectorate will then have until 14 April to decide whether to accept the application. If the application is accepted, the Planning Inspectorate will begin assessing the developer’s plans. There will be a six-month long examination phase, including hearings, from approximately August this year to February next year.

The scheme is earmarked to occupy 662 acres of land between the M69 and the Leicester-to-Birmingham railway line, and falls mainly within the boundary of Blaby District Council, south-west of Elmesthorpe village in Leicestershire.

Blaby District Council has a statutory right to be consulted in the process, enabling it to make comments and raise concerns. The Council has confirmed that it will be carefully scrutinising the developer’s proposals and commenting on the scale, scope and location of the scheme and how it will affect local residents and the District as a whole.

Tritax Symmetry is already aware the Council has significant concerns about the impact the development will have on the District. The scheme is part of the Government’s long-standing plan to divert container transport traffic off major roads and onto the rail network for the bulk of its journey to and from major sea ports. To provide for this, the HNRFI will incorporate new rail sidings from the existing Leicester-to-Birmingham lines to accommodate up to sixteen trains per day, up to 775m long, which can link into warehousing and storage areas.

The warehousing and ancillary buildings themselves are expected to total up to 850,000m2 and reach up to 28 metres in height, and there will also be a lorry park, energy services area and associated landscaping with new access routes, a major new link road from the M69 to the B4668/A47 Leicester Road at Hinckley and southern facing slip roads at Junction 2 of the M69.

The scheme is large in scale and has national importance, so the application for its development will be ultimately decided by the Secretary of State for Transport, who is expected to make a decision in the summer of 2024. The Council is reassuring residents that it will continue to keep residents and our website updated on the progress of the application.