Questions have been raised about the capability of a road to handle hundreds of extra vehicles including HGVs after plans for 112,000 square metres of warehouse space were passed by Brentwood Borough Council.

Once operational, the traffic flow on the B186 Warley Street between the Brentwood Enter site access and Warley Interchange B186 junction with the A127 is forecast to increase by up to 71 per cent.

Brentwood Council passed plans for the creation of four new warehouse buildings and associated infrastructure, including access roads, parking and landscaping across the site, when its planning committee met on December 12.

Access to the park would be via a new link road from junction 29 of the M25 leading to a new bridge over the A127, and a second access from the B186 Warley Street that connects to the A127 at the Warley Interchange.

The B186 came under specific scrutiny and questions remain about how the road will handle so much extra traffic.

Councillor Phil Mynott, chair of planning said: “From the amount of assessment that has gone on it does seem most likely that the focus of the impact of this development will clearly be on the stretch of road between the route out of the site and the Warley interchange junction which is where this 71 per cent increase of traffic is being talked about.

“Clearly a 71 per cent increase in traffic on a road which only has a single lane in both directions is going to have an enormous impact and you do wonder going down the years what kind of impact that will have on the road.

“That road was clearly not built to deal with that amount of traffic and HGVs.”

There was also concern about how the development would affect the Great Warley conservation area though the developer has said it expects one additional vehicle per minute during the peak hours.

Paulette McAllister, historic environment consultant for Brentwood Council told the committee: “The assessment from us is there will be impact but we are satisfied that the harm is less than substantial.”

Brentwood Enterprise Park is envisaged as a massive modern industrial site that is anticipated to account for around 40 per cent of Brentwood’s employment land need for the next decade or more.

The site, which was previously used to facilitate the M25 widening scheme, falls partly on the green belt. However, the local plan removed the vast majority of the site from the green belt to be allocated instead for employment use.

The logistics site, from property development giant St Modwen, is forecast to create up to 2,370 direct full-time jobs – equivalent to 2,660 jobs when accounting for part-time working patterns. It is also estimated that employees from the development will spend up to £6.9 million in the local area each year. The development will generate business rates payments of up to £3.7 million annually.

Four large warehouses are being proposed – at 70,000 square metres, 7,800 square metres, 13,000 square metres and another of around 22,000 square metres. The total of more than 112,000 square metres is big enough to hold 14 football pitches. The largest warehouse will be around 24 metres high.

A new road bridge will be constructed over the A127 which will connect the site to Codham Hall Lane to the north and provide a new vehicular access point to the site. The existing A1247 overbridge used as a bridleway will be retained for bridleway use alongside the proposed new A127 overbridge for vehicular use.

The existing vehicular access to the site from the south-east corner of the M25 Junction 29 roundabout will be closed and two new entrances provided –  one from the north, via a new mini roundabout and 125 new road bridge over the A127 and a second from the east, via B186 Warley Street via a signal-controlled junction.

A new link road between the site and M25 Junction 29 is proposed, alongside an associated mini roundabout, footways, lighting and signage.