BRITISH Shipping Minister Mike Penning has told Hong Kong's Hutchison Port Holdings, which owns the UK's biggest container port at Felixstowe, to "back off" further judicial challenges to the expansion of rival ports while at the same time conceding errors made by government agencies.
Southampton's Associated British Ports (ABP) wants to redevelop two berths and carry out dredging work to enable the port to accommodate the biggest ships, but the project has been held up by a legal challenge by Hutchison.
The project has faced other delays because of errors made by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), and red tape at the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs slowed it down further.
In admitting government mistakes, Mr Penning promised that the MMO would have the necessary staff and expertise to deal with the planning application now in order to deal with mistakes of the past.
"He also sent a strong message to Hutchison Ports, the rival port operators, to back off from any future judicial challenge," reported the Southampton Echo newspaper.
"There are still plenty of things that can go wrong, but I feel that today's debate has made a difference and I am grateful to MPs across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight for taking part," said Mr Penning.
Hutchison, which owns Felixstowe port, legally challenged a planning consent granted to ABP by the MMO on environmental grounds. This has forced a re-assessment of the scheme. ABP runs 19 ports, all smaller than its flagship operation in Southampton and terminals at Cardiff, Swansea, Grimsby, Ipswich and Plymouth.
The new berths and dredging works in Southampton are part of a port masterplan to boost box handling capacity from two million to 2.7 million TEU by 2020. Felixstowe handles more than three million TEU a year, which roughly doubles Southampton's throughput making it the busiest container port in the UK and, said the report.