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Today's entry reports on recent questions inspectors have
asked about Planning Act applications.
Two weeks ago
I reported on two 'preliminary meetings' that had
happened that week, for the North Killingholme Power Station
project on Humberside and for the Thames Tideway Tunnel in London.
Today's entry is concerned with the decisions taken by
the panels of inspectors following those meetings, set out in the
so-called Rule 8 letters for each project (after the corresponding
rule number in the examination rules for Planning Act projects).
Rule 8 letters contain three main things: a confirmed
timetable, any procedural decisions about examining the
application, and the first round of questions for the applicant and
other parties to answer.
Last Friday, the Killingholme project's Rule 8 letter was
published, and it set a record for the number of questions asked by
an examining authority in its initial list: 323. But that
record only lasted for six days, because yesterday the panel
examining the Thames Tideway tunnel asked 421 questions.
Those totals are conservative, in fact, because many of the
questions are composed of several parts and could be considered
several questions in reality. There is no doubt that these
applications are being examined with colonoscopic thoroughness.
C.GEN, the promoters of the Killingholme project, have until 14
October to answer their questions, 16 working days, whereas Thames
Water have until 4 November to answer theirs, a leisurely 27
working days. Although not every question is directed to the
applicant, the Killingholme project works out at over 20 questions
to be answered per day and the Tideway one is about 15 1/2 per
day.
In case it feels left out, I should mention that a third Rule 8
letter was issued earlier this week, for the Clocaenog Forest
onshore wind farm project, which required a mere 122 questions to
be answered in 20 working days. That's 866 questions for
three projects in one week.
Let us pause for a moment to consider trends. The Hinkley
Point C nuclear power station application, made nearly two years
ago and second only in size to the Thames Tideway Tunnel at 35,000
pages or so, had a mere 17 questions asked at this stage that took
just over two pages to express. That remains the fewest number of
questions asked so far. No doubt all those who worked on that
application will put it down to its quality, that it was so good
that it anticipated nearly all the questions that might have been
asked. Maybe so, but that is probably not the whole answer.
As the Planning Act regime gets into its stride, inspectors
are becoming more proactive, as arguably the regime intended them
to be. But have things gone too far?
Here is a histogram of numbers of questions asked on each
successive project. The trend is only upwards because of four
recent applications - the jury is out on whether there is a general
increase. The recent low figure is 38 questions for the A556
project (another quality application, I might add). I had
previously mooted Walker's law of inverse objectionableness
where projects that attracted the most objections yielded the
fewest questions, and vice versa - inspectors only feeling the need
for proactivity when objectors weren't doing the job - but
maybe that is no longer true. The Tideway project had the
second highest number of representations.
And can a six-month examination period cope with such a volume
of material? The Tideway panel asked Thames Water for some more
information to supplement their 50,000 page application - it was
clearly not big enough - and they have obligingly submitted a
further 20,000 pages. I suppose one should bear in mind that
the Tideway project is one of the largest ever likely to come under
the Planning Act regime, and also that the regime already allows
examination periods to be extended. Perhaps the Planning
Inspectorate should be more relaxed about extending this in cases
that need it, rather than seeing it as a badge of honour that none
of their examinations have had to be extended yet. One size
does not have to fit all.
Finally, I previously mentioned that both applicants had
proposed changes to their applications at their preliminary
meetings. In both cases the Rule 8 letters invite comments on
the changes, and then the panels will decide whether to accept them
shortly afterwards. In Thames Water's case, they have
been asked to publicise the changes in the same way as a whole
application requiring Environmental Impact Assessment is
publicised. I'm not sure that the balance of
proportionality has been reached on application changes yet.
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