The government is consulting on its plans to speed up the planning process for major infrastructure projects.
The reforms could see the Planning Inspectorate becoming not just a an organisation that runs the rule over development consent order (DCO) applications but also acts as a consultant to project promoters to help them with their applications.
Highways England (as it was then) submitted a DCO application to the Planning Inspectorate in October 2020 No for the Lower Thames Crossing but had to withdraw it because it had submitted incomplete information. It took a further two years for the organisation, by now rebranded as National Highways, to get a viable application in. The reform plans should prevent this sort of screw up.
The DCO process for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) was created by the Planning Act 2008 for energy, transport, waste and water projects. Since its introduction in 2010, more than 110 NSIPs have been consented. In 2011, amendments through the Localism Act brought democratic accountability, with ultimate decision-making power given to the secretaries of state. The regime was extended in 2013 to include large scale business and commercial schemes and again in 2016 to allow related housing development to be consented as part of a DCO.
According to the government, the NSIP process has reduced the time taken for major infrastructure projects to achieve development consent to an average of around four years, compared to the eight years it took to get Heathrow Terminal 5 through a conventional planning inquiry. However, the average timespan for DCOs has increased from 2.6 years in 2012 to 4.2 years in 2021.
In February this year the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) published its NSIP action plan to speed up the DCO process. Five months later comes the consultation paper: Consultation on operational reforms to the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) consenting process.
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