Infrastructure Bill changes explained as committee stage starts

Angus Walker picture-13This entry reports on further explanation of the changes to the Planning Act 2008 regime in the Infrastructure Bill at the start of its committee stage in the House of Lords.

The Infrastructure Bill makes a miscellaneous collection of amendments to infrastructure-related legislation, like the Growth and Infrastructure Bill before it.

Clauses 17-19 amend the Planning Act 2008, allowing inspector appointments to be made earlier, allowing two inspectors to be appointed, and making amendments to the post-decision amendment process to be supported by later secondary legislation. The government has helpfully published the briefing note that it has written for peers to explain the changes made to the infrastructure planning regime.

Of all the amendments to the bill tabled so far by their noble lordships, there is a noticeable gap between clauses 16 to 20, suggesting that the Planning Act amendments are uncontroversial, or even - gasp - boring. There is a bit of news on each of the amendments below for the unfazed, though.

The committee stage is the line-by-line debate on the bill and five days have been set down for this in the House of Lords, the first being yesterday. The debate only dealt with clauses 1-3 and schedules 1-2, and no amendments were made. The Hansard report of the debate can be found here

The clauses deal with the conversion of the Highways Agency from an agency of the Secretary of State to a 'strategic highways company' (SHC), more like Network Rail. In fact schedule 1 of the bill that sets up this SHC does amend the Planning Act 2008, to include highways for whom the SHC is the highway authority to come under the definition of nationally significant infrastrucure project.

Early appointment

The idea of allowing the appointment of inspectors as soon as an application has been accepted rather than after the applicant has certified that everyone was notified about the acceptance of the application (i.e. given the chance to make representations), is that they will have more time to wade through the often voluminous application documents before the six-month examination starts, potentially allowing examinations to be shorter. Will it give them more opportunity to spot holes and ask questions, though?

Two inspectors

Of some interest is the impact assessment accompanying the bill, since this does two things.

It confirms (at the bottom of page 5) that the examination fees for having two inspectors will be amended to be about half way between the fees for one and three inspectors, fair enough. It also estimates that one application per year would have had one inspector but will have two instead and three would have had three inspectors but will have two instead. At least that's a net reduction of two inspectors a year, but hardly a huge number.

Post-decision amendments

The briefing note mentioned above contains some useful information about post-decision changes to Development Consent Orders (DCOs), which I now understand a bit better. I mean I understand the proposed changes better, I already understand DCOs quite well.  

First, the threshold between non-material changes (which have a very simple procedure) and material ones (which have an onerous one at present) is explained further - that if no update is required to the Environmental Statement, no Habitats Regulation Assessment is required and no new licence for a European Protected Species is required, then it will probably be a non-material change. I hope this is put in more formal guidance at some point rather than promoters having to resort to a peers' briefing note to argue that their changes are non-material.

Secondly, the power in clause 19 of the bill to refuse an application for a material change to a DCO and require a full new application to be made is actually - I think - designed effectively to introduce a new threshold between a simplified material change procedure and a full application.

The note gives two examples of changes that would probably require a new application - extending a highway that had been consented from town A to town B, past town B to town C; and changing the fuel that a consented power station uses from gas to coal or biomass. Useful, but there are going to be a whole lot of examples that are closer to call.

The note then contains some intel at annex A, setting out what changes to the amendment regulations are likely to be consulted upon. There will be minor changes to the non-material change procedure - mirroring changes to scales of maps for main application, and changing the publicity and consultation requirements.

There will also be changes to the material change procedure. Consultation will be reduced, and community consultation may not be required at all, a possiblity of not holding an examination of the changes, and the introduction of time limits that match main applications.

The note also says that the consultation will be launched this month, so if you want to change the changes to the change procedure, watch this space.