Save Arena Essex- Tell Google to search elsewhere!

 

Wedged between the Mar Dyke Valley and Lakeside Retail Park, the former Arena Essex Raceway is not your usual wildlife haven. Where once stock cars and speedway bikes lined up to cross the finish line first, the dust has now settled and nature thrives on the former Arena Essex Raceway site. Its complex history has led to a unique 52ha mosaic of brownfield features, calcareous grassland, flowery Thames Terrace Grassland, bare ground, scrub and young woodland - earning it a nationally important invertebrate population and Local Wildlife Site status.  

This hidden secret in Thurrock has no public rights of way, but much of the site has been used for many years for fishing and informal walking and cycling. It has also been found by wildlife in an increasingly developed landscape. Its 52ha are home to hundreds of species of invertebrates, including Brown-banded Carder Bee (Bombus humilis), Five-banded Weevil-wasp (Cerceris quinquefasciata) and the Dingy Skipper butterfly (Erynnis tages)- with many more to be found- as well as rare plants such as Endangered Broad-leaved Cudweed (Filago pyramidata) and birds such as Red Listed Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos).  

The chequered flag was waved on the Raceway in 2018 and its future as a wildlife haven is now at risk from a new data centre campus for Google. The Google-associated ‘Global Infrastructure UK Limited’ plans would lead to over 80% of its precious Open Mosaic Habitat on Previously Developed Land being lost. Meanwhile, Google boldly touts claims in its 2025 Sustainability Report of “Cultivating nature on our campuses” and “rebuilding nature in the very places it’s been paved over”. 

Buglife is calling on Google to live up to its sustainability claims by changing course and sparing this unique wildlife site. Tell Google to search for somewhere else for their development!