Today's entry reports on the choice of a national competent authority for cross-border energy projects.
This sounds rather a boring issue but it does have relevance to the Planning Act regime and meant that the Planning Act was mentioned in Parliament on Monday. You may recall a blog entry from last month that was to do with 'projects of common interest' (PCIs).
PCIs are effectively internationally significant energy projects that straddle the borders of two or more European Union countries. They won't necessarily exceed the thresholds in the Planning Act 2008 but they are likely to. Each member state must eventually set up a process for streamlining the authorisation of such projects that has certain features similar to, but not identical to, the Planning Act regime. They were introduced by a European Union Regulation that came into force earlier this year.
The EU was required to publish the first list of such projects by 30 September, and it managed to do so on 14 October. We love deadlines here, but the rest of the EU don't seem that bothered by them. I am told that traffic lights are compulsory in Milan, a suggestion in Rome, and a decoration in Naples. 24 of the announced PCIs involved the UK, and they are listed in the earlier blog post if you're interested.
The next step was that each member state had to say who would be responsible for the authorisation of PCIs, which had to be done by 16 November. The UK did so on 18 November - well, the 16th was a Saturday - by means of a written statement in Parliament from Ed Davey MP, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
The statement can be found here. As I predicted in my earlier blog post, he has designated himself as the 'national competent authority'. A slightly odd phrasing: 'I am today designating the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change as the national competent authority ...', where 'I' and 'the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change' are one and the same person.
What does that mean? Not surprisingly, the government is retaining control of infrastructure project consenting via Mr Davey, who is already the consenting body for projects using the Planning Act 2008 and the Electricity Act 1989. The statement goes on to deal with devolution in some detail, because the Secretary of State does not currently authorise most projects in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and he will delegate authority to those administrations to preserve the current arrangements.
That is possible because the Regulation allows the 'national competent authority' to delegate responsibility for individual projects or classes of project to others. In England, not all projects are consented by the Secretary of State at the moment - they may just need planning permission - but the statement didn't deal with those directly.
What happens next? Not a lot (externally, at least) until April 2014, when the EU must have set up a website for easy access to information on PCIs, and the UK and other member states must say how they are going to streamline environmental impact assessment (EIA) for PCIs. The next month, member states must issue a manual saying how PCIs will be authorised.
The written statement makes it clear that the UK is not going to invent a new process, and will use existing regimes where it can, but it won't always be able to.
'In implementing the requirements of the Regulation our intention is to be as transparent as possible and, wherever practicable, to maintain the existing permitting processes for major infrastructure.'
The implication is that it won't always be practicable to maintain the existing processes.
Analysis
Although this announcement only affects a small number of (large) projects at the moment, the law may be changed generally in the UK so that there aren't too many different consenting processes, so it could still affect a project near you. The EU may also extend the regime to other projects at some point, such as transport networks.
It will be interesting how the 'manual' will deal with three things. First, what will happen to projects in England that are currently not consented by the Secretary of State - will they be delegated to the existing bodies such as local planning authorities?
Secondly, although, as the statement says, projects that use regimes other than the Planning Act will usually take the required maxima of two years for pre-application processes and 18 months for application stages, there is no guarantee of this, and in some cases they take much longer. How will the time limits be imposed on non-Planning Act regimes such as conventional planning permission?
Thirdly, even the Planning Act isn't entirely foursquare with the proposals in the Regulation. It doesn't have any deadlines for pre-application processes, and doesn't have any for certain periods between an application being made and the examination starting at the preliminary meeting. The Regulation also places more emphasis on there being a 'one stop shop' for all the consents a project might need.
These developments are certainly worth keeping an eye on, then, as apart from the projects they affect directly, they are a sign of the way the wind is blowing and may well trickle down to make their impacts felt on others.
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