An independent, public examination of Thames Water’s detailed proposals for the Thames Tideway Tunnel will commence after Easter, it was confirmed yesterday.

The Planning Inspectorate has deemed the application for Development Consent for the ‘Supersewer’, submitted by Thames Water last month a valid one. This means that the Inspectorate has accepted that Thames Water’s consultation for the project, which started in September 2010, was adequate.

The Planning Inspectorate will now post Thames Water’s 50,000 page submission, covering 24 proposed construction sites, on its website for public scrutiny (see here)

Phil Stride, Head of Thames Tideway Tunnel at Thames Water, said:

“The team has worked extremely hard over many months to ensure that the application is of a high standard, addressing a wide variety of issues that were raised during the consultation.

"It’s a necessarily lengthy document, covering 24 proposed construction sites in detail, as well as project-wide issues. We have made particular efforts to make the documentation easy for members of the public to navigate, with clear sign posting of issues relating to individual sites. Local residents should not need to read all of the submission, just the sections relevant to their community."

After the independent public examination, where members of the public can register with the Planning inspectorate to examine the application, the next stage is a Preliminary Meeting.

This is expected to be held by the Examining Authority, a panel of up to five inspectors appointed by the Planning Inspectorate, in September 2013.

The Preliminary Meeting is an opportunity for registered interested parties to raise procedural matters with the Authority about how the application should be examined. In particular, matters concerning the proposed examination timetable, which will be circulated by the Planning Inspectorate to all registered interested parties in advance of the Preliminary Meeting.

Within the next few weeks, Thames Water will make hard copies of the full document available at six locations across London.

Planning Inspectorate examination of the proposals is expected to take about six months from the date of the Preliminary Meeting. Once the Planning Inspectorate has concluded its examination, a recommendation on whether or not to grant approval will be submitted approximately three months later to DCLG and DEFRA Secretaries of State. The final decision is expected in late summer/early autumn 2014.

If consent is granted, preparatory construction work on the project is scheduled to start in 2015, with main tunnelling due to begin in 2016. The target completion date is 2023.