Catalogue description Department of the Environment: Channel Tunnel Unit and predecessors: British Channel Tunnel Company Ltd: Copies of Project Files

In 1957 the Channel Tunnel Study Group was commissioned to carry out a full geological and geophysical survey of the Straits of Dover. Its results, published in 1964, confirmed the technical feasibility of the construction of a Channel Tunnel. There would be a British terminal at Cheriton, Kent, and in France at Frethun, near Calais.

The Government negotiated with an international group of banks and investment institutions interested in financing the construction of the tunnel. In March 1971 an agreement was signed with the group who were formed as the British Channel Tunnel Company Limited, to carry forward the project on the basis of a mixture of capital and Government-guaranteed loans. A detailed Agreement (No 1) of 20 October 1972 began the process for the preliminary organisation for construction and financing of the Tunnel, with other agreements to follow.

Legislation to ratify the Treaty, was delayed until the General Election of 1974. Costs, including those to the proposed new high-speed railway line from London to the Tunnel, were becoming prohibitive. The Secretary of State for the Environment announced the British Government's decision to abandon the project in 1975. Construction has just begun, with 300 metres of service tunnel completed at Shakespeare Cliff, Dover.

The files in this series are the unregistered papers of the British Sub-group, Rio Tinto Zinc Development Enterprises Ltd. who were the project management company in the UK.