This is entry number 303, published on 9 December 2011, of a blog on the Planning Act 2008 infrastructure planning and authorisation regime. Click here for a link to the whole blog. If you would like to be notified when the blog is updated, with links sent by email, click here.
Today's entry reports on further delays to National Policy Statements.
National Policy Statements (NPSs) are the cornerstone of the Planning Act 2008 regime. They express the need for different types of infrastructure, and set out the impacts that promoters should mitigate and the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) or its successor should take into account when considering applications. Given that the test of whether to approve an application is essentially (a) that it is in accordance with the relevant NPS, and (b) that the local impacts must not outweigh the benefits (which are both expressed in the NPS), it is clear that these documents are vitally important.
The previous government planned to have 12 NPSs in all - six on energy, three on transport and three on water and waste. It got as far as publishing six for consultation on energy and one on transport (ports) in November 2009. Since then, the coalition government republished the six energy NPSs for a second round of consultation and after a debate and vote in the House of Commons finalised, or 'designated' them in July this year.
The new government has issued two more NPSs in draft - one for waste water and one for hazardous waste. The former has completed its public consultation and Parliamentary scrutiny stages, and is awaiting a response from the government - with or without a revised version of the NPS - and a Parliamentary debate before designation. The latter is awaiting a report from the EFRA Select Committee of MPs before it will be in the same position.
The government has also announced that it will not produce two of the other originally-planned NPSs, on aviation or water supply. The former is because the only likely above-threshold project to come forwards in the next five years, the likely lifetime of an NPS, was to be a third runway at Heathrow, which is now not government policy. I think it should publish an NPS anyway, which says it does not support a third runway at Heathrow - there is still the possibility of other applications coming forward. Commentators have suggested that the Chancellor's autumn statement reopened the prospect of other runways in the south east, for example. The current glacially slow programme towards a revised airports policy is no substitute.
No Water Supply NPS is again because of lack of projects, albeit not due to government disapproval this time - the water companies are just not expected to bring any large enough projects forward in the next few years.
I have recently found out that the remaining two NPSs, ports and 'national networks' (i.e. roads, railways and rail freight interchanges) are to be subject to further delay, partly to do with lack of space in the Parliamentary timetable.
The Ports NPS got as far as starting its final debate in the House of Commons, but the debate ran out of time and was not completed. There is apparently no space in the timetable to complete it before the House rises for Christmas on 20 December, so we will have to wait until January before this happens and the NPS can be designated. A debate on apprenticeships on 19 December is clearly important enough to take up a whole day.
The National Networks NPS was originally supposed to have been published in November 2009 along with the Ports NPS, but was delayed, partly because of the emergence of the High Speed 2 project and how this would impinge on the rest of road and rail policy. It was eventually announced that the NPS would be published this month, and would reach designation in December 2012. I have recently heard that despite the best efforts of the DfT this will not happen, but that it will, definitely, come out in January. Having said that, the rail freight element of the NPS was effectively published last week.
Just as with applications, the NPS process is slower than had been hoped, but we are getting there eventually.
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