Conservationists at RSPB Wallasea Island in Essex will create a six-hectare lagoon on newly purchased land.

A marshland nature reserve built with the help of more than three million tonnes of soil from the Crossrail scheme is to be expanded.

RSPB Wallasea Island, in Essex, includes vast amounts of material excavated during the construction of tunnels beneath London for the Elizabeth Line.

This was brought to Wallasea by ship and used to raise land levels and create a new 115-hectare intertidal area of salt marsh, islands and mudflats at the Crouch and Roach estuaries.