Merlin Entertainments has called for the withdrawal of a planning application for the proposed London Resort.
In a letter to the Examination Authority (ExA) dated 20 January, Merlin said that Resort planners had not demonstrated “any tangible progress”.
The ExA previously asked Resort planners to provide regular updates to the ExA, after months of delays to the project.
“The Applicant appears only to have undertaken a very tokenistic amount of engagement with statutory consultees and Affected Persons, and in many cases, none at all,” Merlin wrote in the letter published on 26 January.
“We are now of the view that the ExA should formally request a withdrawal of the application (which
we had previously suggested as a possible measure).”
‘Re-apply’
Merlin added that it invited London Resort planners to “re-apply in due course”, with an “examination-ready” application.
The company has moved to openly oppose the application in recent months after several years of dismissing the London Resort proposals as lacking credibility.
Merlin has previously encouraged the ExA to begin assessment of the plans in March 2022 without further delays, such as those which have previously repeatedly occurred.
The operators of Alton Towers and several other UK theme parks added that the London Resort planners were “unwilling to take a consistent and coherent approach” in their application.
Due to the scale of the proposed London Resort development in Kent’s Swanscombe peninsular, the UK government will ultimately decide the application’s fate via its ExA planning department.