This is entry number 316, published on 30 January 2012, 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 moves towards the abolition of the Infrastructure Planning Commission.
The Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) currently receives, examines, and in the case of energy and now in theory ports projects, decides applications for nationally significant infrastructure projects. It is to become part of the Planning Inspectorate on 1 April under the provisions of the Localism Act 2011. I had thought it might be 6 April but apparently it is planning for a switchover on the Sunday before that. The true date is not yet legally fixed and will become apparent when the order commencing the relevant part of the Localism Act is made.
The IPC has just published information on the switchover, which can be found here.
NID or the 'national infrastructure directorate' is now becoming the accepted term for the replacement of the IPC ( you heard it here first back in May 2011), so flush the interim term MIPU (or Major Infrastucture Planning Unit) from your vocabulary.
For those involved in current applications, the transfer will be seamless, or thereabouts. Some personnel may change, but the process and correspondence will continue as before, just with the Planning Inspectorate letterhead instead.
In terms of general communications, the changeover will be somewhat more seamy, but nothing too seismic.
The website will change and move. It will be accessible from the Planning Inspectorate's 'Planning Portal', here. The exact link will become available in March. It will have a new look, and although it will contain similar information about live and forthcoming projects, the process in general, advice and guidance, historical information about the IPC will not be kept.
If you subscribe to the IPC newsletter, there will be one more edition and then you will have to re-subscribe to the more general Planning Inspectorate newsletter, which you can do here. This will become bi-monthly (it seemed to be quarterly before) with added information about national infrastructure.
If you are under 30 or like me are desperately trying to have an up to date online presence, and follow the IPC project feeds on twitter, you will have to follow new accounts that will be made known in due course.
So the long-expected demise of the IPC is beginning to take shape. I must stress that the process for authorising nationally significant infrastructure projects will remain much the same, though. The letterheads may change, but the streamlined process will continue.
Previous blog entry 315: seventh National Policy Statement designated
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