This is entry number 302, published on 6 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 the transition towards the abolition of the Infrastructure Planning Commission.
The Planning Act regime for authorising nationally significant infrastructure projects is to be amended by the recently enacted Localism Act, most notably to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC). The IPC's examination and recommendation functions will be taken over by a new part of the Planning Inspectorate (now expected to be NID, the National Infrastructure Directorate), and its decision-making function will be taken over by the government. According to Wikipedia, NID is not to be confused with Niþ, which is apparently a social stigma implying the loss of honour in historical Germanic society. There is no loss of honour here!
There are now seven applications that have been made to the IPC and are still 'live', i.e. they have not either been decided, rejected or withdrawn. Incidentally since there are one each of those latter categories, we've just reached double figures in terms of applications made to date.
What will happen to the seven applications on the abolition date, expected to be 6 April 2012 (and any others made between now and then)? And what about proposed applications earlier in the pipeline? You won't notice a thing, say the government. To put this into practice, the government has just issued a statement about how it is going to handle the transition from the pre-Localism Act to the post-Act world, which can be found here.
First to note is that the transitional arrangements will apply to all applications or proposed applications where the promoter has at least formally notified the IPC of the commencement of pre-application consultation. It has been decided that any earlier projects don't need transition - things such as scoping opinions and powers to enter land for surveying will endure after the IPC is gone.
For the projects that are included, the government will issue a 'direction' in two parts, a sort of TUPE for infrastructure projects. The first part will basically say that anything already done will not be wasted, and can be treated as if it had been done to or by NID. The second part will cover any specifics applying to particular applications, e.g. personnel handling an application not changing. The direction will be published in draft in advance (since it can't actually be issued until the section of the Localism Bill allowing it to be issued comes into force).
The second-last paragraph of the statement is code for saying 'just because you know it's going to change, doesn't mean you can behave as if it has changed already'. In other words, any relaxation of the regime, e.g. not needing to publish a whole SoCC, cannot be assumed until next April.
The impending direction and this statement saying what it will involve will provide further reassurance to promoters worried about hiccups to their applications next April, although the recent increase in applications might mean that this is already of decreasing concern.
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