The DTLR’s new Minister of Planning, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is set to announce proposals to speed up the planning process by cutting short public inquiries into “projects of national significance”.
Falconer plans to introduce national policy statements, which will confirm which schemes are considered to be of strategic importance. The policy drive would mean that public inquiries into such cases would not be able to question the validity of the schemes but only to dispute the details.
Such strategic projects would include nuclear power stations, major waste disposal sites and major changes to transport infrastructure, such as Heathrow’s Terminal 5, which spent 524 days undergoing inquiry.
Michael Gallimore, head of planning for Lovells, said he welcomed any proposal that made the process faster. “Its a nonsense that Terminal 5 took as long as it did, and there is a lot of sense in trying to speed it up. If the principle for Terminal 5 had been in place before the inquiry it would have gone through with far less trouble.”
Concerns have been raised that any proposals that involve cutting out potentially long-winded public inquiries would effectively prevent opposition to proposals. But Gallimore thought it unlikely that the Government would introduce legislation that would cut out public inquiries altogether. “It would be a major leap to remove the current system of inquiries without replacing it with some sort of consultation scheme. And whatever replaced the current system would have to be compliant with the Human Rights Act,” he said.
Public inquiries are also safeguarded by European legislation. EU Directive 85/337/EEC demands that “the public are given an opportunity to express an opinion, in the light of an Environmental Impact Assessment, on the proposed development unless the details are adopted by a specific act of national legislation”.
The proposed overhaul of the planning system in England and Wales was mooted by Labour’s business manifesto: “Too often the planning system is dogged by delay, to no one’s benefit. We will streamline the planning process, particularly for infrastructure projects. For larger projects, public inquiry procedures will be improved by stricter time-tabling.”
The legislation will be based on the consultation document, called Modernising Planning, which was published by DETR in 1999. The consultation document strongly hinted at a scaling-down of inquiries by using alternatives to the standard procedures, such as Acts of Parliament, Hybrid Bills, which were used to pass the Channel Tunnel proposals, and Special Development Orders, which have been used for urban development areas.
It also highlighted the need for national policy statements: “In the absence of national policy statements on the benefits of, or the need for, such projects, the whole burden of debate tends to fall on local inquiries. This can make for an unduly lengthy process.”
It is thought that Lord Falconer of Thoroton’s “can-do” reputation and closeness to the Prime Minister will mean he can push through potentially controversial legislation. A spokesman for the Minister said that an announcement on the exact nature of the legislation could be expected “sooner rather than later”.
The Treasury today announced that a Green Paper on reforming the planning system will be published later this year.
Meanwhile, a major reform of the Scottish planning system has been announced by the Scottish Executive, which will give local authorities more responsibility for their own plans, and pave the way for a national planning strategy.
Scotland’s Deputy Planning Minister Lewis Macdonald said that proposals laid out in the Review of Strategic Planning would abolish the structure plans and replace them with regional strategic development plans for Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. These in turn would form the building blocks of a national planning strategy.
Speaking at the Royal Town Planning Institutes national conference in Glasgow on Friday Macdonald said: “I believe there are exciting times ahead for planning. These proposals attempt to reinvigorate planning and position it to meet the challenges ahead. Strategic planning involves hard choices and strategic development and these plans will require to make tough decisions about the scale and location of development and redevelopment.”
EGi News 18/06/01
