Failing to dredge at the Goodwin Sands could cost the redevelopment of Dover Western Docks another £20 million.

It could eventually lead to the missed chance of generating all of the projected 520 jobs from the Dover Western Docks Revival, affecting hundreds of Dover families.

That’s the warning from Neil Wiggins, Port of Dover community director, who says that dredging would instead have to go to the London area, meaning money being spent away from the Dover area.

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He said that less than half a percent of the Goodwin Sands would be taken anyway

In an exclusive interview with the Mercury he said: “A consequence is that it’s going to cost a great deal to source materials from elsewhere.

“And that means that there is money being spent on somebody else’s profitability somewhere else, probably around the London area, that we won’t be able to spend here in Dover. And this is all about delivering for Dover.”

Video: Neil Wiggins on dredging at the Goodwin Sands

Mr Wiggins confirmed that it could cost about £20 million more to dredge elsewhere.

He said: “The figure in some of the original reports was £6.7 million for covering the first dredge and the calculation currently is that it will probably be three times that amount.”

He added: “Because the Port of Dover handles approximately 17% of all the UK’s trading goods, expansion of port capacity is a national priority.

“So we have to deliver on the additional port capacity. What we want to also deliver is areas of regeneration for additional new high quality jobs once the construction is all complete.

“And if we’re spending money somewhere else then we don’t have the money to deliver all of that programme. We’re talking at the moment of probably about 520 additional new jobs.

“If we have to curtail that development then a proportion of those 520 new jobs will not materialise and that’s hundreds of families here in Dover that are going to be adversely affected and not have jobs for the long term and training and education and development for their children.”

He said that the new vacancies would be in, for example, logistics, port operations, in leisure, training activities and retail.

He added: “If we don’t have the money to spend to complete the entire project, we don’t then have the space to deliver the 520 long-term jobs for Dover.”

The Port of Dover stresses that it only wants to take 0.22% of the sand from the Goodwins.

The amount dredged would be 2.5 million cubic metres but it would still leave more than 99.7% of the site untouched.

Strong opposition continues from protesters such as the pressure group Goodwin Sands SOS (Save Our Sands).

Some 13,000 people have signed an online petition against the dredging.

But the harbour board argues that the Goodwin Sands have been dredged a number of times since the Second World War.

Dover Harbour Board argues that the area chosen has the least overall environmental impact.

Mr Wiggins said: “The site at the Goodwin Sands that has been selected has been shown to be the least environmentally damaging to dredge.”

Secondly, Dover Harbour Board says, this avoids seal haul-out sites and sensitive seabed habitats. The port authority says that there would be no coastal impacts such as wave heights or coastal erosion.

It insists that there are no known military wrecks or military aircraft crash sites within the dredging area.

The MMO is expected to announce its decision on whether to allow the Goodwin Sands to be dredged by the turn of October and November.

This will follow its examination of the results of a third public consultation following a new survey by the harbour board at the turn of this April and May.

The cost of the DWDR is estimated at £250 million and is expected to be completed by the winter of 2019/10.

Mr Wiggins concluded: “I think DWDR is a vitally important part of regeneration for Dover.
“It’s something that Dover’s been waiting for in excess of 70 years now more or less since the end of the Second World War.

“It’s going to deliver improvements that would put Dover back on the map as a destination of choice.”

Goodwin Sands SOS argues that the harbour board can’t guarantee that it will not dredge up the resting places of wartime servicemen.

There are believed to be the remains of 82 Battle of Britain airmen in the area.

GSSOS co-ordinator Joanna Thomson said: “No one, least of all DHB, knows the exact locations of the numerous military air crash sites that lie scattered around the sands.
“The technology simply does not yet exist.

“This is clearly illustrated by the accidental dredging up of a rare wartime Junkers 88 T reconnaissance plane in the Thames Estuary in 2011.

“This was despite a decade of planning and a whole suite of pre-dredge geophysical surveys.”

She explained that dredging the immediate area had to be suspended for 11 months while further investigations and recovery of the plane were carried out.

The work here had been for the London Gateway port development.

Ms Thomson said: “Not only did the dredgers’ drag head smash the plane into small pieces but unfortunately it was not discovered until the end of the dredge run so at first no on knew exactly where the plane was located.

“It highlights the weakness of relying on geophysical surveys to successfully detect buried remains.”

Historic England has asked for a further survey using a magnetometer to check for steel or iron buried in the dredging spot.

But GSSOS argues that the Second World War planes contained very little iron or steel as even the engines were usually made of aluminium to reduce weight.

GSSOS remains fearful about possible coastal erosion affecting the coast between Pegwell Bay and St Margaret’s Bay where the Sands end, and wants to protect a proposed Marine Conservation Zone.

It has said that landfill and construction aggregate is available from established commercial dredging sites in areas such as the Thames Estuary.

The group also does not accept that being unable to dredge the Goodwin Sands will jeopardise the regeneration of Dover or the prospect of new jobs.

Ms Thomson has said that the projected new jobs are for when the development is completed rather than during construction so they should still be available regardless of where the aggregate comes from.