93: latest Conservative position on the Planning Act 2008, NPSs and the IPC

This is entry number 93, first published on 3 February 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 reports on what Bob Neill MP, shadow planning minister, said about the Planning Act regime this morning.

Bob Neill has been MP for Bromley and Chislehurst in south east London for around four years and has been shadow planning minister for about a year.  This morning he spoke at a well-attended 'business breakfast' at our offices.  If you would like to be put on the invitation list for future events, let me know.

He started by saying that the long-awaited planning shadow green paper, where Tory planning policy will be set out in writing, was turning into A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (I think he meant in length terms, rather than references to biscuits), but would be published shortly.

In the meantime he reiterated (or slightly refined) the party's policy on the new regime should they be elected this year.  They would keep the single consent regime and National Policy Statements (NPSs) - so that means that most of the Planning Act will continue.  The Infrastructure Planning Commission 'will not be kicked out of the door on day one', but would be 'folded back' into the Planning Inspectorate, who deal with ordinary planning appeals and the like.  I would think that folding may take a while, although they do at least share a building in Bristol.  Sir Mike Pitt, IPC Chair, need not pack his bags quite yet.

The two 'non-negotiable' changes would be a Parliamentary vote on NPSs, and the Secretary of State deciding applications in all cases, not just when there was no NPS in place.  Being a lawyer (as is Bob Neill) I can't help deducing that the abolitiion of the IPC is therefore presumably negotiable.

One interesting point was that they have not ruled out retaining hybrid or private Bills in Parliament for some projects - most likely the 'long and thin' ones rather than the 'round and fat' ones, as he put it.  The current government have announced that High Speed 2, the high speed railway project along the spine of the country, would be authorised by means of a hybrid Bill, so this is not unexpected, but it will be interesting to see how that develops.

If one were speculating which of the 16 nationally significant project types in the Planning Act were round and fat and which were long and thin, then presumably generating stations, gas storage, LNG facilities, gas reception facilities, airports, harbours, rail freight interchanges, dams and reservoirs, waste water treatment plants and hazardous waste facilities would be in the former category, while electric lines, gas transport pipelines, other pipelines, highways, railways and transfers of water resources would be in the latter.

On the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), also included in the Planning Act, he said that they wouldn't keep the current CIL Regulations (in draft at the moment) but were not necessarily against the principle of CIL.

The seven draft NPSs will be nearly ready to approve (or 'designate') come the general election, unless they just manage to sneak in before the starting gun is fired.  If the Tories win, it remains to be seen whether they will hold their promised vote on them straight away, or tinker with them first, as presumably the policy they contain is not going follow the Tory line 100%.  Even if the NPSs are delayed, however, that doesn't stop the IPC from starting to receive applications next month.