How’s it planning out?

Roger Milne reports on the ups and downs of life for water and energy firms under the reformed planning system, and particularly the NSIP regime

The UK’s planning regimes are undergoing reform. This involves all the devolved administrations to a greater or lesser degree, but England is the hotspot. It is also where the public and political fallout has been most pronounced.

What has happened so far? First, the coalition has promoted a localism agenda, which has seen the dismantling of the regional plans and regional housing targets regime pursued by Labour, a process not quite complete but well under way. As a counterpoint, the coalition is establishing a new tier of development plans, at so-called neighbourhood level. These are beginning to climb off the drawing board.

Second, the Department of Communities and Local Government has streamlined and cut back planning policy guidance to a manageable 46 pages (from literally thousands of pages previously). This is now compressed into one document called the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

Importantly for utilities, the NPPF insists planning authorities work with them and other authorities to assess the quality and capacity of infrastructure for water supply, wastewater and its treatment and energy (including heat) and “take account of the need for strategic infrastructure, including nationally significant infrastructure within their areas”.

Planning, stresses the NPPF, plays a key role in “supporting the delivery of renewable and low ­carbon energy and associated infrastructure”. Planning authorities should “design their policies to maximise renewable and low carbon energy development”.

Third, the government has scrapped the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) and returned ­decision-making to politicians when it comes to nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) such as reservoirs, big power stations, gas storage schemes, transmission projects and big new wastewater treatment facilities (see box).

Fourth, the government has just published a Growth and Infrastructure Bill. Among its measures are proposals to allow existing Section 36 consents for power stations to be varied without requiring a complete re-submission, and a stricter regime for the time taken for appeals.

Also in the Bill are plans to implement recommendations from the so-called Penfold Review, an exercise that aims to remove or streamline overlapping development consent regimes where multiple permissions from different government agencies (such as the Environment Agency) are required on top of planning ­permission.

Fifth, the government is proposing changing the new regime for NSIPs, changing the threshold for power transmission and distribution schemes and allowing more flexibility over detailed design changes to a scheme.

In many cases, these changes have still to bed down. There is undoubtedly a new emphasis on speedier decision-making, and there is certainly an impact on the activities of utilities, particularly water.

Stephen Langlois, who heads Anglian Water’s planning team, is in no doubt that things have changed. “The pressures to speed up the planning process, and at the same time disaggregate greater responsibilities for policy development, have increased demands on infrastructure providers. The issues relating to water and wastewater planning remain complex, and the need to work in partnership and plan early to address them is stronger than ever,” he says.

Removal of the regional planning tier makes the preparation of planning policy at the strategic level extremely difficult and has led to uncertainty around local targets for growth, he says.

In addition, local plan-making nationally has progressed slowly (over one-third of the strategies have yet to be signed, sealed and delivered), creating fears of a planning policy vacuum. “Fortunately, this plan-making has fared better in the Anglian Water region than others, in part down to the work put in to water cycle studies. Despite this, we have seen a significant increase in work to support the preparation of local plans,” explains Langlois.

In the past, planning has been one of the biggest bugbears for wind developers. Mention planning to wind turbine specialist Ecotricity chief executive Dale Vince and he goes splenetic. However, the news is no longer one of endless delays and rejections.

The most recent assessment from RenewableUK, published last month, contains some good news. It suggests that the trend for declining approval rates in England over the past five years may have abated. The number of projects decided this year has increased by 25 per cent on last year, with 29 of 50 projects approved against the 40 projects determined in 2010/11.

It is notable that this is accompanied by a decrease in the average size of projects in England. This suggests that developers are consulting closely with communities and local planning authorities to deliver projects that are more acceptable to local decision-makers.

Nationally significant infrastructure projects – the story so far

Without question the single most important development of the recent planning reforms has been the establishment of a regime specially tailored for major infrastructure projects.

The Planning Act 2008 was set up to streamline what was then generally accepted as a sclerotic planning regime characterised by overblown hearings and spiralling timescales. Reform was seen as a prerequisite of any move to a nuclear power renaissance.

The then-new system was, in the jargon, heavily front-loaded. Developers had to engage in a lot of consultation and produce a finalised design before they were accepted by the newly created Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC). The need for the projects was a given and not up for debate, buttressed by a suite of National Planning Statements.

The IPC, then a new entity, determined the project (not ministers) to a strictly defined timetable. There was to be no repeat of the long-running Heathrow fifth terminal inquiry or the hearing into plans for ­Sizewell B, Britain’s last new-build nuclear power station. That inquiry, held in the 1980s, lasted more than 300 days, spread over two years.

Creation of the IPC was controversial. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, then in opposition, backed the notion of a streamlined planning system for nationally important infrastructure but baulked at politicians no longer taking the final decision.

Come the 2010 election, one of the coalition’s first moves was to abolish the IPC as an independent organisation and transfer its activities (and staff) to a special unit inside the Planning Inspectorate. That unit now recommends to ministers whether development consent should be granted, but to a strict timetable.

EDF Energy, with its plans for two new pressurised water reactor units at its proposed Hinkley C nuclear power plant, and National Grid with a major programme of new transmission lines, are both heavily involved in the new arrangements. What’s their verdict?

Hector Pearson, a planner by profession, is the external affairs manager for National Grid’s land and development team. He points out that the company has a £13.6 billion investment programme in new or upgraded power transmission schemes in the pipeline over the next decade, all of which are NSIPs.

“We’re reasonably happy with the new regime. It gives us certainty. But it needs honing. We accept that local communities are going to object. We have to work with the local authorities: it is hard and challenging,” he says.

“We will own and operate this infrastructure. We’re not selling it on, so we have to develop a good relationship with local authorities”. He explains that relations were often quite difficult when they began but ended up less fraught. Negotiating so-called planning performance agreements has helped the process: these establish deadlines for work and allow the developer to provide help to the local authority to carry out technical appraisals of the scheme.

“The IPC started off rather formal but gradually it and its successor realised it had to be more helpful in terms of advice. It has mellowed, become more approachable,” says Pearson. He is pleased the regime is being changed so that some flexibility in design can be accommodated. This is important when, like National Grid, you want to offer the option of undergrounding for some parts of a scheme.

Shortly the Planning Inspectorate will send a big file to energy secretary Ed Davey containing its recommendation on EDF Energy’s plans for Hinkley C, planned to be the UK’s first new nuclear power plant in more than two decades. The scheme is the biggest yet handled by the new regime.

On 31 October 2011, EDF Energy applied to what was the IPC for consent to build the plant. Its application ran to 30,000 pages. The local authorities’ Local Impact report was equally weighty. It had 652 pages and a further 12,500 pages of appendices. The hearings finished on 21 September.

The five inspectors and commissioners who oversaw the proceedings must report to Davey by 21 December, and he has until 21 March 2013 to say yea or nay.

Tim Norwood, chief planning officer for EDF Energy’s nuclear new-build division, says: “A key aspect of the Planning Act process requires developers to carry out comprehensive consultation before an application is submitted. For our project at Hinkley Point C, this enabled us to adapt our plans prior to submission, based on the views and comments of the communities and key stakeholders and organisations like the Environment Agency and Natural England, to reduce and mitigate identified impacts.

“The best advice I can give to other organisations embarking on NSIPs would be to ensure they put in place a well organised and dedicated team that has a real understanding of the planning process, the intricacies of the development consent order itself, plus a genuine desire to engage with the local community and key stakeholders.”

This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 7th December 2012.

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