Nationally significant project round-up

Here is the latest news on nationally significant infrastructure projects. I'll go through them in order of project stages.

Pre-application

The number of pre-application projects that the Planning Inspectorate knows about is currently 54, and in a blog post on 13 January 2012, there were 55 then, so this seems to be stable. One can break these down into those that have at least started pre-application consultation, those that have not got that far yet but have sought an environmental scoping opinion, and those that haven't done either of those steps yet (although seeking a scoping opinion is optional).

In January 2012 the 55 broke down into 10 consultation, 24 scoping opinion, 21 nothing; now the 54 breaks down into 16 consultation, 22 scoping opinion, and 16 nothing. A couple of the consultations were a couple of years ago, though, and a couple of the scoping opinions are nearly five years old, so perhaps those projects are stalled. The picture is thus fairly constant even once broken down in this way.

Applications

There is just one application in the 28-day acceptance stage, for the Hinkley Connection electric line project. Having said that, I would say this is the third 'mega-project' to be made under the Planning Act regime so far, after the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station and the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

Pre-examination

Four projects are in the 'pre-examination' phase, i.e. they have been accepted but haven't yet had their preliminary meetings. The activities during this stage are the making of representations and the appointment of inspectors.

Examinations

There are nine examinations currently going on. That is more than this time last year, when there were only three, but there was a peak of 12 in January this year.

Of interest, the Norwich Northern Distributor Road project had its preliminary meeting last week, but the 'Rule 8' letter announcing the subsequent decisions has been delayed while the single inspector is to be joined by colleagues to make a panel, the first time such a conversion has happened.

Recommendations

Corresponding exactly to the three preliminary meetings that took place over two days in September last year, three recommendations were issued on Wednesday and yesterday (but don't get published until decisions are made). These were for the Clocaenog onshore wind farm in Wales, the North Killingholme power station on Humberside and the Thames Tideway Tunnel in London. Their examinations thus all took exactly six months, and their recommendations have been issued after exactly three months. I would expect decisions to be announced on 11 and 12 September, in that case.

Decisions

There has been a bit of a gap in decisions, because there was a gap in applications 15-16 months ago. The last one was for the North London Reinforcement Project, an electric line in Enfield, on 16 April, and the next one should be for the East Anglia Offshore Wind Farm (EAOW, pronounced ee-aw, apparently), next week. The government held a consultation during the three-month decision period on that project - activity following examinations seems to be becoming more common, it also happened on the North Killingholme power project.

Post-decision

The Hinkley Point C judicial review is due to be heard in the Court of Appeal on 15 July, and the Rookery South judicial review has been given leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal, but no date yet. I'm sure promoters Covanta Energy are not in a hurry, having applied for the project in August 2010, and since then having left the UK altogether, but of course the government is the defendant rather than Covanta.

In related news, the government lost at the Aarhus Convention compliance committee on whether Greenpeace's challenge to the Nuclear Power National Policy Statement (which Greenpeace lost back in January 2012) was 'prohibitively expensive'. Note that the fact it actually wasn't prohibited from challenging is not (that) relevant - it is whether your average punter would be deterred from challenging due to the cost risks of doing so. The repercussions won't be great, I suspect, since the government is already dealing with this issue having lost another case on it in the European Court of Justice.

The Preesall gas storage project, for which there was a successful judicial review of its refusal, continues to be reconsidered. The applicant Halite Energy has supplied some geological information to the government at the request of its (as yet unnamed) independent Geological Assessor, and the next step will be an opportunity to comment on further submissions made by interested parties and the report of the assessor once produced.

There are strong rumours that the first application to vary a Development Consent Order (DCO) will be made fairly soon (and the second), so watch this space. What has happened in the last couple of months, though, is that the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has agreed to vary a 'deemed marine licence' that is part of a DCO, for the Galloper offshore wind farm. You can find more details here. Deemed marine licences are a special case when it comes to varying them, because the Planning Act provides that this can just be done by the MMO rather than going through the cumbersome change process for DCOs, currently being amended as part of the 2014 review. I note from that webpage that the MMO calls itself just 'MMO'. Natural England, yes, but 'the' Environment Agency and 'the' MMO, surely.

The North Doncaster rail chord is open for business and trains started running on it on 1 June, just under three years since the application was made on 22 June 2011 - not bad going. It becomes the third NSIP to be operational (although one, the East Northamptonshire hazardous waste project, didn't require any construction).