Concerns have been expressed about the Government’s latest planning reforms.
The Government announced last week that it will scrap mandatory pre-application consultation requirements for nationally significant infrastructure projects.
Instead, developers will receive earlier technical support from the Planning Inspectorate and examinations streamlined.
Delivered through the Planning and Infrastructure Act, the Government claims this will help build wind and solar farms, nuclear plants, reservoirs and new transport links at the fastest pace in a generation under major infrastructure planning reforms.
POOR PLANNING?
It will cut up to 12 months from the planning process and potentially save industry £1 billion this Parliament, a statement says.
But Fergus Charlton, planning partner with national law firm Michelmores warns this is a “bad-news sandwich announcement, without the good news filling.”
He says: “Putting cuts to infrastructure funding to one-side, cutting the ability of the public at large and more importantly the local inhabitants (with their special connections to the land and knowledge of their milieu) to inform the design of nationally important infrastructure will further disenfranchise them from the planning process leading to embedded resentment to the system as a whole and the proposed development in particular.
“The existing consultation requirements for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) does place a burden on the developer, but it helps strike a fair balance for the local community engaging in an infrastructure planning system that greatly favours the developer.”
