LOCAL residents' hero Paul Vickers took the stand yesterday and said the UK would need no new port facility for many years yet, when better sites than Dibden Bay could be on offer.

As Mr Vickers, chairman of Residents Against Dibden Bay Port (RADBP), presented his case for rejecting the planned new container port, more than 50 people - well up on recent numbers - filled the public gallery at the inquiry at Eastern Docks, Southampton.

Mr Vickers said it was wrong to sacrifice Dibden Bay to the £738m development when other sites might soon be available which would better suit the UK container port industry as a whole.

He said that even with his 26 years of experience of managing imports and exports on Southampton Water, it was impossible to say exactly how the port and shipping industries could develop long-term, or how many sites may become available.

"But even if extra provision is needed around 2015, there is no reason to choose Dibden Bay over other locations.

"Over that time more brownfield sites will become available in the United Kingdom. For example, several oil companies are merging or have merged recently and that means refineries will be taken out. The UK has nine and needs only three. Old oil refinery sites make good container port sites."

He said port managers had to respond to the pressure put on them by shipping companies, in the same way as shipping companies had to react to demands from companies such as his - Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux at Fawley, once part of Exxon Chemical.

"The ports have no alternative but to become more efficient," said Mr Vickers.

"investments to improve efficiency are generally small, can be phased and are low risk. A major port expansion on a new site needs a very high level of confidence because the capital outlay is large, and so is the risk."

He criticised "conservative" productivity figures from Associated British Ports (ABP), which is behind the Bay plan, adding: "The critical question is what can be achieved. Not what companies say they are going to achieve.

"They are two different things.

"To support its case for the development, ABP needs to demonstrate there will be a shortfall in quay capacity.

"If it admits that extra capacity could be achieved at existing facilities, it undermines its application for new facilities.

"The extra capacity proposed at Dibden Bay is at huge cost to the environment and local people."

Friends of the Earth spokeswoman Julie Astin took up the same theme.

"We have a vision of a more sustainable society where economic prosperity goes hand in hand with environmental protection, resource conservation and social justice," she told Inspector Michael Hurley.

"Achieving this requires a radical and courageous change in outlook for policy-makers and a fundamental change in the way we think and live."

ABP's counsel Martin Kingston asked Mr Vickers: "Are you claiming that from 2011, far from additional need there will be surplus port capacity?

"Yes", said Mr Vickers.

Mr Kingston added: "You say port operators must invest in a rational way. Consider that two major companies apart from ABP have substantial capital investments in the pipeline.

"They have reached the point where substantial capital expansion is essential. Or are you saying these developments are not to be treated as genuine?"

Mr Vickers said: "Pressure against development today is nothing to what it will be in a few years.

"These companies are acting now to secure options to develop in the future.

"I would tell the secretary of state that productivity growth will more than cope with what the UK needs until 2011.

"In the European Union, they are looking at improving efficiency rather than expansion."

Today, on Day 25, the inquiry is due to hear from Marchwood district councillor Nick Smith, and John Moon from the Council for the Protection of Rural England.