RiverOak Strategic Partners (RSP) is today (16 July 2018) re-submitting its application for a Development Consent Order (DCO) in which it seeks development consent and compulsory acquisition powers over the Manston Airport site. RSP’s plan for Manston envisages the airport as a major international cargo hub, as well as offering passenger flights.

The DCO application was originally submitted to the government Planning Inspectorate (PINS) at the beginning of April. However, it was withdrawn in early May to satisfy PINS’ requests for further information about certain parts of the application. These related to funding, to the categorisation of the project as being of national significance, and to certain aspects of the supporting environmental statements.

George Yerrall, a director of RiverOak Strategic Partners, said: “The original DCO application, which was submitted in early April, and which ran to 11,000 pages, was the culmination of twenty-seven months of intensive work on the part of the RSP team and our professional consultants. This included three separate consultation exercises as well as a complex planning appeal. We were therefore naturally disappointed to be informed by PINS that, in their view, the application fell short in certain respects. Nevertheless, we have taken up all the points raised by PINS and, working with our full team, we have used the past nine weeks to provide full and comprehensive responses to those points. We have also taken the opportunity to clarify the situation in relation to the two museums. We are promising to safeguard their position, as before, but have now made it clear that any future development consent relating to either museum would be a matter for Thanet District Council, rather than PINS.

“The submission sent to PINS today incorporates all that additional work and we believe that the documentation as amended is sufficient to justify the DCO application being allowed to move to the next stage.”