The approval of plans and projects - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 371

The Treasury view about the desirability of speeding up the planning process is not
of course shared by those who see it as a safeguard against unsustainable development:
The sense of panic whipped up by the Barker Review is quite misplaced. The
UK's future is not imperilled by inability to make snap decisions to build runways,
motorways, ports, reservoirs, incinerators, power stations and the like in places
where nobody had thought of doing so before.
Very few infrastructure projects take significantly longer to get a planning
decision than they need to - the same handful of exceptionally complex and
contentious cases seem to top all lists. Some of these take a long time only because
developers persist despite well-known environmental problems because success
against the odds would be so profitable.
(Levett 2007)
Eddington collaborated with Barker in arriving at a set of mutually consistent
proposals for reform. His headline recommendations were:
• the primary role of Ministers should be to set national policy statements for
major infrastructure development, taking full account of economic, social and
environmental considerations, following consultation
• there should be a presumption in favour of development for major infrastructure
proposals so long as they are consistent with national policy statements, and
compatible with EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights
• an independent commission should be established to manage inquiries and
determine individual applications for major schemes in England
• local consultation should be carried out by the applicant at the pre-application
stage and inquiries and decisions would have regard to local considerations
• consent regimes should be rationalised to eliminate duplication and overlap, and
to treat major projects as a whole, and
• there should be a clear framework for statutory rights to challenge at key stages
in the process.
These recommendations were reproduced in the subsequent Government White
Paper on the development planning system in England (DCLG 2007g). The proposed
legislative changes were included in a Planning Bill introduced into the 2007/08
session of Parliament.
The Bill establishes an Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) which will
have responsibility for determining 'development consent' in relation to types of
development in England classed as nationally significant infrastructure projects. These
include:
• the construction or improvement of a highway for which the Secretary of State
is or will be the highway authority (i.e. motorways and trunks roads) outside the
boundary of an existing highway
• the construction of a railway forming part of the national rail network
• the construction or alteration of an airport which is capable of providing services
for at least 10 million passengers a year or 10,000 air cargo movements
• the construction or alteration of a harbour expected to provide a handling
capacity of 500,000 TEU (container units) a year, or 5 million tonnes of cargo.