90: The Times attacks the Infrastructure Planning Commission based on a misunderstanding

This is entry number 90, first published on 29 January 2010, of a blog on the implementation of the Planning Act 2008. Click here for a link to the whole blog. If you would like to receive blog updates by email, click here.

Today's entry looks at an attack on the Infrastructure Planning Commission by the Times newspaper.

The main story is here, and then there is a humour piece based on it here, encouraging the usual Private Eye 'On the Message Boards'-style comments about 'broken Britain'. The only one that is right (so far), is Robbie Owen's comment on the first of the articles.

The Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) was launched in an advisory capacity in October 2009 and applications for nationally significant infrastructure projects will have to be made to it from 1 March. I have started many blog posts with that sentence (for those who come across the post in isolation), and it is still true.

The IPC will decide applications once the relevant National Policy Statement (NPS) is finalised, but even before then it will be compulsory to make applications to it from 1 March. The only difference is that without the NPS, the IPC will report to the Secretary of State, who will make the decision on the application, and with the NPS, the IPC will make the decision itself. It is true that publication of the first NPSs was delayed, but tthe date that the IPC starts up is independent of this, and in fact last year it was brought forward from 1 April to 1 March.

The Times story is based on the premise that applications cannot be made to the IPC at all until the relevant NPS has been finalised. That is wrong and always has been, ever since the Planning Act was passed in November 2008.

The second point that the Times makes is that if the Conservatives win the election that must take place by 3 June and will probably take place on 6 May, it will scrap the IPC and so it will never do anything in its short existence. If it got the start of the IPC wrong, it is probably wrong about the end of it, too.

The Conservatives are regretting their 2008 stance that they would scrap the IPC, and have been rowing back on this ever since. We will hear the latest position next Wednesday, when Bob Neill MP, shadow planning minister attends one of our popular 'business breakfasts' (sorry, attendance at that one is full), but it will be something along the lines of 'We like NPSs but will introduce a Parliamentary vote on them. We like the consent regime under the Planning Act, but we will keep the Secretary of State as the decision-maker, even when the NPSs have been finalised. We will scrap the IPC, *cough*but actually we will just call it part of the Planning Inspectorate with the same staff and commissioners*cough*".

If Bob says anything different on Wednesday, you'll be the second to know (after the people who were actually there). The Tories 'autumn 2009' planning 'green paper' is still awaited (so they're not so hot on punctuality, either), and this will finally put it down in black and green.

Incidentally, thank you for your patience while our website went through an upgrade. The blog entry page titles are now meaningful words rather than numbers: the links within entries to each other are in the process of being changed so that they work. Otherwise, it is business as usual in the four-week run-up to the IPC's birth..