Foulness Island passing of the Ministry of Defence Act 1946 and the subsequent rationalisation of five agencies in 1971, ownership of the island passed from the War Office to the Ministry of Defence. In 2003, a contract to manage the testing of munitions was awarded to the defence contractors QinetiQ, and they also control access to the island. In the 1850s, the South Essex Estuary and Reclamation Company proposed a grand scheme to reclaim around of land on the Essex coast, which would have included most of Foulness Sands and Maplin Sands. The civil engineer Sir John Rennie produced the plans, and
Foulness Island and all reference to the scheme had ceased by 1871. The Board kept the £25,000, the only money that the London ratepayers ever received for their sewage, despite claims at the time that it was worth over £4 million. Around 100 years later, the Roskill Commission investigated potential sites for a third London airport. Four sites were considered, including construction of an off-shore airport on Maplin Sands. The Commission chose a site at Cublington but the UK government rejected the Commission's proposal and accepted a dissenting report recommending that a new airport should be developed at Foulness. The Maplin Development