DIRFT III is 20th DCO decision

Angus Walker picture-13This entry reports on the granting of development consent for the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal extension.

An application to extend the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) is the first decision in the Planning Act 2008 category of strategic rail freight terminals. Indeed, it remains the only such application so far, although there are a couple more on the Planning Inspectorate's list of forthcoming applications, both also in the East Midlands, as it happens.

The application was first made on 31 October 2012, but was rejected on 28 November. The shortcomings identified by PINS (but disputed by the applicant) were rectified and the application was resubmitted on 22 February 2013 and accepted this time on 20 March.

The facts and stats on the application are as follows:

  • joint promoter: Prologis, Aviva and BT;
  • a single inspector, Paul Hudson (who had been lead inspector on Rookery South and Preesall);
  • 34 relevant representations, a fairly low number;
  • 25 written representations, about average;
  • 68 questions in the first round - fewer than 100 is becoming increasingly rare;
  • one open floor hearing, no compulsory acquisition hearings (the application only contained very minor compulsory purchase powers) and three issue-specific hearings, all on the development consent order (DCO);
  • two Local Impact Reports, from Daventry and Northamptonshire (even though Rugby and Warwickshire were also host authorities);
  • draft National Networks National Policy Statement given 'some weight';
  • examination exactly six months, recommendation one day less than three months, decision three days less than three months;
  • 497 days from (second) application to decision, i.e. 16 1/2 months, about average.

The decision letter contains a few points worthy of note, particularly paragraphs 35 to 45 on the DCO. A rail freight interchange is probably the closest type of infrastructure project to a 'business or commercial' project now able to use the Planning Act regime, so there are useful implications here for such projects.

The DCO contained a separate schedule of 'permitted works', equivalent to 'permitted development' under the Town and Country Planning Act, but this was deleted, on the grounds that the minor works already permitted by the DCO would cover these.

The government did, however, like a provision that implementing a future planning permission within the order limits would not constitute a breach of the DCO (albeit rewriting it). This provision might help other DCOs to avoid needing to be changed, by obtaining a free-standing planning permission. Having said that, the decision letter expresses it as being allowed because of the nature of it being a rail freight interchange, so the provision may not be allowed for other types of project.

When it came to seeking consent under requirements, most DCOs include provisions to deal with local authorities not approving details in time or at all and this one was no exception. It tried to go further, though, and modify the Planning Act itself to allow requirements to be amended and non-material changes to be allowed by the local planning authority, and this was removed.

A definition of 'commence' was removed that excluded various preliminary oparations such as site clearance, on the grounds that protections such as a construction environmental management plan would not need to be in place at that point, and the developer might run out of the time allowed for commencement if the preliminary works took too long.

There are some tweaks on a couple of 'tailpiece' provisions, placing boundaries on the scope of changes able to be made subsequently by the local planning authority. This is a more general topic previously covered in this blog post.

In common with recent inspectors' reports, there is a document naming convention, but I like this one in particular:

Document type

Code

Application documents

AD_X

Procedural decisions

PrD_X

Project documents

PD_X

Adequacy of consultation representations

AoC_X

Relevant representations

RR_X

Additional submissions

AS_X

Written representations

WR_X

Local Impact Reports

LIR_X

Statements of common ground

SoCG_X

Comments on relevant representations

CoRR_X

Comments on written representations

CoWR_X

Comments on Local Impact Reports

CoLIR_X

Responses to ExA's Xth round of questions

RXQ_X

Responses to Rule 17 letters

R17_X_X

Hearings

HG_X

The inspector's report then lists every document by type in a table with hyperlinks. If these conventions were followed more generally and throughout the lifetime of an application (perhaps by prefixing each document with the application reference, e.g. 'TR050001', to make it unique), that would be very helpful, I think.

A few applications such as this one have followed the model provisions of giving schedules in the DCO letters rather than numbers, but the government always converts them back to numbers at the end.

The DIRFT decision is the 20th to be issued so far. Now there have been 19 positive and one negative (but remitted) decisions, so the success rate stands at 95% so far.

The decision for the Rampion offshore wind farm, whose promoters no doubt hope will be the 20th grant of consent, is due next week, but the one after that, for the A556 improvements, is not due until early September.