The date for a major High Court hearing over the dredging of the Goodwin Sands has been set.

The judicial review will be at the London court on Wednesday, June 5.

It was awarded to Joanna Thomson of the pressure group Goodwin Sands SOS to contest allowing the work, which it is feared would disturb war graves and damage the environment.

Permission had been given by the government's Marine Management Organisation last July to the Port of Dover.

The port authority wants to use the some of the shifting sands off Deal for aggregate for its redevelopment of Dover Western Docks.

The High Court judge, the Honourable Mrs Justice Thornton allowed a review of one of two grounds.

This is on the the argument that the government’s MMO had not considered the impact of the physical removal of the volume of sand from a designated ‘protected feature’ in a proposed Marine Conservation Zone.

SOS argues the MMO, the defendant in this case, had only considered the impact of removing the surface area of the subtidal sand.

Mrs Justice Thornon said in her ruling, on March 8,: "I accept that the MMO's advisers and the developer provided material information on topography to the MMO.

But I cannot be sure that the MMO received that information with the correct policy position in mind, given the lack of clarity, it seems to me, over whether the MMO considered topography to be relevant."

Topography is the arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area.

But leave was refused for the second assertion, that the MMO could not conclude that dredging would pose no risk to the underwater cultural heritage of the Goodwin Sands.

This was because, Mrs Thomson argued, the relevant document had not been agreed and finalised before making its decision.

GSSOS yesterday lodged an appeal against that ruling.

Mrs Thomson, the named case claimant, told Kent Online : "We feel very strongly that this point is not only highly relevant to our case but the failure by the MMO to allow public scrutiny of important updated documents is setting a dangerous precedent within the marine licensing process."

The Port of Dover wants to dredge three million tonnes of aggregate from the Sands, which it argues is only 0.22% of them.

It says the material is needed for the its Dover Western Docks Revival project, which which it says would help create jobs in the area.