North Yorkshire Council have been served with a pre-action protocol letter regarding the decision to go ahead with the “Maritime Hub” Town Deal project. Lawyers for Fight4Whitby sent the letter this week, in an action consequential to the winning of the long running Whitby Harbour court case.
The land at Endeavour Wharf was ruled to be harbour land during the case which was heard in March 2024. Endeavour Wharf is a registered cargo wharf. The decision to go ahead with the building of this structure on a registered cargo wharf made no reference to s33 of the 1847 Harbours, Docks and Piers Clauses Act, and did not seek to explain how NYC would comply with s33 of the 1847 Act if part of the wharf was occupied by this structure.
Fight4Whitby have requested that NYC cease construction of the Maritime Hub in breach of s33 of the 1847 Act and make Endeavour Wharf available again “by all persons for the shipping and unshipping of goods and the embarking and landing of passengers”. Fight4Whitby have requested that NYC provide full details of what consideration they gave to s33 of the 1847 Act, as well as details of precisely what space would be available for shipping/unshipping and loading/unloading of passengers both during construction and after construction. They have until May 28th to reply, otherwise it can go to judicial review.
Excepting the (il)legality of the process, one principal reason why availability of Endeavour Wharf cargo space is essential is that to repair the pier extensions (required by 2031 at the latest, from a Royal Haskoning report) a site compound would be needed for storage and preparation of materials. You can see on the image below the size of the site site compound (blue outline – this is the size used when repairing the west pier etc in 2018-2019). The yellow outline is the footprint of the Maritime Hub.
Grab some popcorn
