Magna Park as it exists today aready has profound effects on the environment and on the quality of life in the surrounding area. More than twenty years after Magna Park phases 1 and 2 were built, screening with trees is still ineffective, except from very close by, along the A5 boundary. Despite mitigation measures taken, light pollution is extensive. BE2, which would double the existing size of Magna Pak, would make this worse. Unregulated employee traffic rushes through rural roads, lanes and villages, especially at shift changeover times. Employer travel plans for staff are purely advisory and unenforceable. The private car is the most convenient way of getting to work door-to-door. The B4207 (formerly the A407) is not part of the Magna Park HGV routing plan and villages along it already suffer vibration and damage to houses caued by HGVs. Peak traffic, much of it HGVs, along single carriageway sections of the A5, such as at Wibtoft just north of Magna Park present a real danger and accidents are common.

Policy BE2 is written specifically with the 2 pending applications in mind. It emerged in its final form specifying 700k sq.m. only after three-way discussions between the council and the 2 developers, after dbSymmetry withdrew their judicial review application against the approval given to 15/00919/FUL (the DHL warehouse) and after each developer undertook not to oppose the other's application (see letter from dbSymmetry's planning consultants, Framptons, to the council dated 10 May 2017 - a highly significant letter). If BE2 is approved, the two applications will require 327 hectares of what is currently agricultural land, both productive arable and pasture. This will diminish the UK's capacity to grow food at a time when the population is forecast to grow rapidly (and world demand is also growing due to population growth and the effects of climate change). BE2 conflicts with paragraphs 111 and 112 of the NPPF. The Submission Plan does not consider whether there are brown field sites which could be used in preference productive farm land. The existing Magna Park was built on a former RAF aerodrome which could be considered a brown field site, but any expansion would be outside it.

The Secretary of State at DEFRA has warned (23 October 2017) of much of the UK's arable soil losing its fertility within the next 30-40 years because of intensive farming, but such farming will increase if more and more land is taken up by warehousing.

Visually, expansion of Magna Park would be highly intrusive, especially to communities such as Ullesthorpe. MOre than twenty years after Magna Park phases 1 and 2 were built, screening with trees is still ineffective, except from very close by along its boundary with the A5. Despite mitigation measures taken at the time, light pollution is extensive. BE2, which would double the existing size of Magna Park, would make this worse.