A proposed tunnel crossing under the Thames has become the UK longest ever planning application, at 359,000 pages.
Paperwork for the £10bn project, which would dig a 14-mile motorway tunnel under the Thames to the east of the Dartford Crossing, is 250 times longer than War and Peace.
It is now Britain’s longest planning application, containing 2,383 separate documents.
Ministers were forced to delay construction of the Lower Thames Crossing until 2026, because the planning system was unable to cope with the application.
If laid end-to-end, the pages of the application would stretch 66 miles, almost five times as long as the road itself.
An estimated £800m has been spent on the paperwork alone.
