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Lappel Bank, Medway, 22 ha
Ringed plovers - significant numbers at Lappel Bank
The site: Lappel Bank was an area of
mudflat on the Medway Estuary, an internationally important site
that supports an average of 53,900 wintering waders and wildfowl.
The Bank itself supported average peak numbers of 1,700 birds
including significant numbers of shelducks, ringed plovers,
grey plovers, dunlins and redshanks.
The proposed development: In 1989 Medway Ports Authority sought
and received planning permission for the reclamation of Lappel Bank
for a car and cargo park. The permission was not immediately
implemented.
In 1993, the Secretary of State (SoS) for the Environment
designated the Medway Estuary and Marshes as a SPA, but decided to
exclude Lappel Bank on the grounds that the economic need not to
impair the future expansion of the port outweighed the site’s
nature conservation value.
The objection: The RSPB challenged this
decision on the grounds that the Birds Directive did not allow
economic considerations to be taken into account in the designation
of an SPA. The RSPB brought a judicial review against the SoS,
which was eventually referred by the House of Lords to the European
Court of Justice (ECJ).
The decision: The ECJ ruled that the UK
government had acted illegally to withhold Lappel Bank from the SPA
designation for economic reasons. This decision underlined that
economic considerations cannot be used to exclude areas of habitat
from designation as SPA.
Unfortunately, the planning permission had been implemented and
the site destroyed before the ECJ had issued its ruling. The ruling
left the UK government with an obligation to compensate for the
habitat loss in order to maintain the coherence of the Natura 2000
network. The government has now announced a site that could be used
for this compensation.
Last modified: 02 April 2004