Two days, three consents

This entry reports on the outcome of three development consent order applications published on Thursday and Friday.

Last week was a busy one for the consenting teams in three government departments - the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - who had to issue three decisions.

All have now been issued and all have been granted, as follows, with links to the decision documents:

1. the North Killingholme power station;
2. the Clocaenog onshore wind farm; and
3. the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

North Killingholme power station

The application was made on 25 March 2013. The facts and statistics are as follows:

• project: to build a coal, gas or biomass power station at North Killingholme on Humberside;
• promoter: C.Gen Killingholme Ltd;
• three inspectors, Kelvin MacDonald, Martin Broderick and Alan Novitzky;
• 27 relevant representations, a low number;
• 46 written representations, fairly typical but unusual to be more than the relevant representations;
• 323 questions in the first round - very high;
• one open floor hearing, five compulsory acquisition hearings and nine issue-specific hearings;
• one Local Impact Report, from host unitary authority North Lincolnshire;
• examination exactly six months, recommendation exactly three months, decision exactly three months; and
• 535 days from application to decision, i.e. 17 months, a little above average.

One point of interest I have spotted: the government did not grant consent for compulsory purchase powers for a gas pipeline into the power station nor an electricity cable coming out.

Clocaenog wind farm

The application was made on 28 March 2013. The facts and statistics are as follows:

• project: to build an onshore wind farm in north Wales;
• promoter: RWE npower renewables;
• one inspector, Wendy Burden - her first, although she is now examining the Whitemoss landfill application;
• 277 relevant representations, a medium to high number;
• 57 written representations, fairly typical;
• 122 questions in the first round - about average these days;
• three open floor hearings, one compulsory acquisition hearing and six issue-specific hearings;
• one Local Impact Report, jointly from host unitary authorities Conwy and Denbighshire;
• examination exactly six months, recommendation exactly three months, decision exactly three months; and
• 533 days from application to decision, i.e. 17 months, a little above average.

Thames Tideway Tunnel

The application was made on 28 February 2013. The facts and statistics are as follows:

• project: to build a sewer underneath the River Thames in London;
• promoter: Thames Water;
• five inspectors, Jan Bessell, Libby Gawith, Emrys Parry, David Prentis and Andrew Phillipson. Jan led Brig y Cwm and Andrew Hinkley Point C; Emrys has been on three other panels;
• 1246 relevant representations, a very high number;
• 104 written representations, high;
• 421 questions in the first round - the highest to date;
• nine open floor hearings, 20 compulsory acquisition hearings and 16 issue-specific hearings - by far the most to date;
• 14 Local Impact Reports, from a selection of London boroughs;
• examination exactly six months, recommendation exactly three months, decision exactly three months; and
• 561 days from application to decision, i.e. 18 months, towards the top end.

An open space application was also successful - the urgency of the project overrode the need to provide replacement land or face special parliamentary procedure.

The panel of five inspectors concluded that the case for granting consent was 'finely balanced', and effectively say that they were only able to recommend that the DCO be given consent because of the changes they made to it (see paragraph 21.1 of their report). Two London boroughs have said they might challenge the decision - Hammersmith & Fulham and Southwark.

There are some interesting points raised by this huge application that may justify their own blog entry in due course.

There were no doubt some corks popping at the end of last week in various project offices across the country. That now marks 25 decisions made under the Planning Act 2008 regime - 24 positive and one negative, and the latter was overturned on judicial review, so a 100% record to date, of sorts.