PEOPLE and businesses facing the prospect of a £750m port development as their new next door neighbour have fired their final shots against the scheme at a public inquiry in Southampton.

The proposed container terminal at Dibden Bay will be separated from Hythe Marina by a small creek if given the go-ahead by Transport Secretary Alistair Darling.

In his closing statement on behalf of Hythe Marina Village, Hythe Marina Association and Hythe Marina Ltd, counsel Tom Hill told the inquiry that the impact would be overwhelming.

He said 64 per cent of the residents he represented had their principal or only homes on the marina and added: "For the vast majority of this number, when they acquired an interest in the marina, the prospect of a container terminal on a massive scale as an immediate neighbour was unthinkable and there was no evidence that it was either possible or likely to happen."

The scheme has been drawn up by Southampton Docks operator Associated British Ports and Mr Hill added that those plans had come as "a terrible and painful blow" to the marina residents.

"There is no basis whatsoever," he said, "upon which it can fairly be said to Hythe Marina parties 'You knew what was coming.' They did not - nor, as we have shown, did ABP until the mid-1990s."

In stressing that residents "deserve and should receive the full support of the planning system", he told inquiry inspector Michael Hurley: "You should not shrink from recommending refusal."

Mr Hill went on to outline the day and night-time noise impacts both during construction and when the terminal became operational if it went ahead - the vibration caused by construction activities, the impact on the landscape, night- time lighting and potential navigation problems.

Earlier, the inquiry heard that most of the differences between the Army, which runs Marchwood Military Port to the north of the Bay, and ABP had been resolved.