CALLS for a temporary Olympic lorry park to be made permanent have drawn concerns from some quarters.
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) gained permission to set up a temporary site to house 129 lorries earlier this year at a site just off the M11 motorway in Chigwell.
The site, which is designed to monitor vehicles involved in the construction of the 2012 Olympic site, currently has temporary permission until after the games when it is due to be dismantled and returned to fields.
But calls have now been made to maintain the site after the games as a legacy project.
Road Haulage Association manager Chrys Rampley said: "This area was earmarked for a motorway service area and I think it would be crazy if it went back to being a brownfield site. You've got the Port of Tilbury nearby, as well as central London. We are lobbying to ensure this becomes a lorry park."
Chigwell county councillor John Knapman said he would look at any proposed scheme but thought it lacked merit at the current time.
He said: “I’d have to see. I take the view this is a temporary measures, I don’t see why it’s at all right to ask for something as a temporary measure and then move the goal posts There would be concerns with slow roads and everything else.
“I think it’s a bit much to start saying it should be made a permanent lorry park: that wasn’t the terms under which it was granted planning permission. If they’d just asked ‘can we have a lorry park?’ They’d be lucky to get it.”
Loughton Residents Association vice-chairman David Linnell, who successfully campaigned for the site’s planning permission to prohibit use of the Loughton junction of the M11 said on a personal level he had mixed views on the new idea.
He said: “If it meant lorries didn’t park in residential areas, which many do, it could have something about it. I am slightly concerned about the Green Belt effect I would have to have a look at that. It’s something that’s worth exploring.”
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