Representation by Hannah Gill
- Date submitted
- 23 June 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
First and foremost I am a resident of Enderby Village, which sits 8 miles or so from the planned HNRFI development. As well as a resident I am also one of two District Councillors for the Village. I am greatly concerned about the development plans for HNRFI and the impact it will have on the local area. Some of my concerns are listed below. 1. Need There are already a number of existing and recently approved rail interchanges and distribution centres within the local area. I do not feel that the Applicant has provided sufficient data that supports demand for such growth in the area. In addition, there are no specific training courses at local colleges which would feed into the workforce for logistics and distribution and a therefore show a gap in the labour market to supply jobs in this area, there needs to be an extensive training and development framework that links into local schools and colleges to support the creation of local jobs for local people. 2. Traffic and congestion I am concerned that the employment figures quoted in the Application do not clearly demonstrate the full capacity of employment at the site. The document claims that employment could range from 8400 – 10400 in different sections; this under representation in parts of the document, of about 24%, could lead to considerably more traffic in the surrounding areas impacting significantly on air quality, highways and congestion. Furthermore, I am concerned about the increased barrier downtime on the Narborough/Littlethorpe crossing. When this is currently down the traffic build up backs up to adjoining roads in the area creating congestion, this would only increase causing traffic to re-route – potentially via Enderby. 3. Impact on Housing There appears to be no consideration to the increase in demand on local housing to support an increase in the local workforce. With Hinckley and Bosworth seeing levels of unemployment of about 3.2% and Blaby District of only 2% (and this includes those incapable of working) I wonder where these employees for the logistics, rail and distribution roles will be coming from. There is already a high demand for housing in the local area which will only increase if HNFRI goes ahead. 4. Air Quality I am concerned that with the inaccuracies across the documentation of numbers of employees, discrepancies over the number of manufacturing and logistics roles and other elements; that the level of pollution and the effect on the environment has not been properly examined in a robust manner. 5. Climate change As a new development it is sad to see that the Applicant cannot show the site would be capable of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. HNRFI could be the industry example and lead the way in green energy technologies, sustainable travel and green logistics. The current plan laid out in the application does not show a competent sustainable travel strategy and the location of the site is unsustainable for such a strategy to exist in the long term. Adding to this the application does not make full use of green energy such as solar panels to offset the carbon emissions from staff and logistics vehicles. Overall, taking the above in to consideration, I feel that the negative impact to Enderby will be felt by every resident not just now and during construction but long term.