The Government published a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) Action Plan in February 2023 and committed to bringing forward reforms “to ensure the existing system can support our future infrastructure needs by making the NSIP consenting process better, faster, greener, fairer and more resilient by 2025”.
Subsequent to that the Government consulted in July 2023 on operational NSIP changes to “make the system work more effectively for applicants, local authorities and communities”.
The NSIP Action Plan was silent, however, on an important question that was included in the 2020 “Planning for the Future” white paper, which was case for allowing new settlements to be brought forward under the NSIP regime. The development industry, so I am led to believe, was supportive of this and, with the 'next generation of new towns' back on the agenda, this is a question that it might be timely to revisit.
The case for doing so is twofold.
Firstly, the size of site being allocated in local plans and securing planning permission is increasing, which means that large sites, and so the need to deliver large sites, have become a key component of supply. According to Savills, sites with capacity for over 1000 homes comprised less than 2% of all planning permissions granted in 2012. That proportion had risen to 10% by 2020.
Secondly, large sites can take a long time to deliver and are subject to the lengthy planning application processes that a Development Consent Order (DCO) can help cut through. According to Lichfields, the average time from validation of a first planning application to the first dwelling being completed on schemes of 2,000 or more homes is 8.4 years.
According to recent analysis by Knight Frank, there are 83 projects being promoted for 1,500 or more homes presently. 54 of these have planning permission, which means that 29 do not and whilst many if not all will be well advanced towards making a planning application, this affords some sense of the scale of projects that may benefit from securing consent by way of a DCO.
It could be said that new settlements and major urban extensions are just the type of development that the NSIP regime was created for. They are complex, multi-faceted projects that require national political direction, up-front engagement and a comprehensive masterplan prepared in association with a number of other agencies. Present arrangements allow for up to 500 homes that are linked to an infrastructure project that itself requires development consent, but are not supportive of large-scale residential development in its own right.
Once the principle of development has been established in a development plan (or perhaps in the future a National Policy Statement...), their delivery and the delivery of associated infrastructure could be expedited by utilising a DCO to confer in a single consent all of those required in addition to planning, e.g. environmental permits, compulsory acquisition of land or rights, and highways orders, all of which can significantly delay a development programme, especially for large-scale housing schemes that rely on infrastructure.
Practically speaking, the use of the DCO should be discretionary, and so only an option for securing consent because, as Lichfields has noted, a planning application, a development corporation or a Local Development Order may still suit the delivery of a particular scheme. A residential DCO would not be a proverbial ‘silver bullet’ and would need supportive policy and technical apparatus to make the NSIP regime suitable for the residential sector, but it could be of great of benefit to projects being conceived now to have the option of a DCO in the future and this could be achieved with relatively minor changes to the Planning Act 2008.
The case for doing so is twofold.
Firstly, the size of site being allocated in local plans and securing planning permission is increasing, which means that large sites, and so the need to deliver large sites, have become a key component of supply. According to Savills, sites with capacity for over 1000 homes comprised less than 2% of all planning permissions granted in 2012. That proportion had risen to 10% by 2020.
Secondly, large sites can take a long time to deliver and are subject to the lengthy planning application processes that a Development Consent Order (DCO) can help cut through. According to Lichfields, the average time from validation of a first planning application to the first dwelling being completed on schemes of 2,000 or more homes is 8.4 years.
According to recent analysis by Knight Frank, there are 83 projects being promoted for 1,500 or more homes presently. 54 of these have planning permission, which means that 29 do not and whilst many if not all will be well advanced towards making a planning application, this affords some sense of the scale of projects that may benefit from securing consent by way of a DCO.
It could be said that new settlements and major urban extensions are just the type of development that the NSIP regime was created for. They are complex, multi-faceted projects that require national political direction, up-front engagement and a comprehensive masterplan prepared in association with a number of other agencies. Present arrangements allow for up to 500 homes that are linked to an infrastructure project that itself requires development consent, but are not supportive of large-scale residential development in its own right.
Once the principle of development has been established in a development plan (or perhaps in the future a National Policy Statement...), their delivery and the delivery of associated infrastructure could be expedited by utilising a DCO to confer in a single consent all of those required in addition to planning, e.g. environmental permits, compulsory acquisition of land or rights, and highways orders, all of which can significantly delay a development programme, especially for large-scale housing schemes that rely on infrastructure.
Practically speaking, the use of the DCO should be discretionary, and so only an option for securing consent because, as Lichfields has noted, a planning application, a development corporation or a Local Development Order may still suit the delivery of a particular scheme. A residential DCO would not be a proverbial ‘silver bullet’ and would need supportive policy and technical apparatus to make the NSIP regime suitable for the residential sector, but it could be of great of benefit to projects being conceived now to have the option of a DCO in the future and this could be achieved with relatively minor changes to the Planning Act 2008.
For anybody really interested in this here comes the science part.
Route A. The Section 35 route for "new settlements".
This approach would require an amendment to Section 35(2) to allow new settlements that met certain criteria (that would need to be set out in Guidance) to elect to seek a Direction from the Secretary of State that they be considered to be projects of national significance. As for business and commercial projects, there would be no automatic status as an NSIP - instead, it would be for the project promoter to elect to seek a Direction and to convince the Secretary of State that the project was suitable.
Route B: A new "field" of NSIP for "new settlements".
The second route would be by way of an amendment to Section 14 to create a new "field" of NSIP for "new settlements". This route would require the Planning Act to establish in law a set of thresholds to define when a project would be nationally significant and would automatically be consented via a DCO.
Route A, so the very clever person whose advice those routes come from tells me, would not require a debate about where statutory thresholds for entry into the regime should be set and would afford greater flexibility for site promoters.
Route A. The Section 35 route for "new settlements".
This approach would require an amendment to Section 35(2) to allow new settlements that met certain criteria (that would need to be set out in Guidance) to elect to seek a Direction from the Secretary of State that they be considered to be projects of national significance. As for business and commercial projects, there would be no automatic status as an NSIP - instead, it would be for the project promoter to elect to seek a Direction and to convince the Secretary of State that the project was suitable.
Route B: A new "field" of NSIP for "new settlements".
The second route would be by way of an amendment to Section 14 to create a new "field" of NSIP for "new settlements". This route would require the Planning Act to establish in law a set of thresholds to define when a project would be nationally significant and would automatically be consented via a DCO.
Route A, so the very clever person whose advice those routes come from tells me, would not require a debate about where statutory thresholds for entry into the regime should be set and would afford greater flexibility for site promoters.
This seems to me to be a legislative tweak that could have an exponentially greater impact than the relatively modest changes required to implement it.
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