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The government should review the size thresholds for water projects to automatically be considered of national significance, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has urged.
The commission also called for a similar review of the size thresholds for energy projects and said onshore wind projects should be brought back within the scope of the Planning Act 2008, which requires Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects to obtain a development consent order from the relevant secretary of state.
To automatically be considered of national significance, the act currently states that dams and reservoirs must store or hold back more than 30 million cubic metres or have an output of more than 80 million litres per day. Water transfers must similarly have an output of more than 80 million litres per day.
In a new report, the NIC said the relatively large number of requests for water projects to be considered nationally significant suggests these thresholds may be too high.
Conversely, the commission said the thresholds of 50MW for onshore electricity generation and 2 kilometres for electricity transmission may be too low for some technologies.
The report, which also included a number of recommendations to speed up the process, noted that the average approval time for a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), has risen by almost two thirds since 2012 from 2.6 years to 4.2 years, while the rate of judicial reviews has grown to 58% from a long-term average of just 10%.
The NIC said an application under this planning regime is not financially viable for solar projects of less 200MW. With projects below the threshold often able to obtain planning permission in less than a year under the Town and Country Planning Act, the commission said this has created a “gap in the market” for solar projects between 50MW and 200MW, “potentially constraining the UK’s renewable capacity.”
In 2015, the government introduced new planning restrictions preventing local authorities from granting approval to onshore wind projects in England unless they are located in an area identified as suitable in a local or neighbourhood plan and have the “backing” of the local community. The following year, the government also removed onshore wind projects from the NSIP planning regime.
The changes have long been criticised as creating an effective moratorium on the deployment of onshore wind in England, with installations falling by more than four-fifths between 2016 and 2022.
The NIC said eligible onshore wind projects should be brought back into the NSIP regime, stating: “The inclusion or exclusion of different technologies in the system also has a clear impact on scheme delivery, particularly when some infrastructure types are more contentious and may be resisted at local level.”
In 2020, the government removed electricity storage projects, aside from pumped hydro storage, from the NSIP regime, which had previously led most developers to limit the size of their projects to less than 50MW.
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