In its recently published Energy Review Report, the UK Government has announced that it wants to simplify the planning regime for major energy infrastructure projects, by clarifying and speeding up the planning consent procedures for such projects.

The Government's strategy to tackle the current planning barriers to the development of energy infrastructure projects relies on the following three key components:

  • The Government wants to set out the strategic contexts that must be taken into account by planning authorities when dealing with planning applications for major energy infrastructure developments.
  • New and more efficient procedures for the planning regime will be introduced to enable public inquiries to focus on local and other relevant issues.
  • The Government will introduce appropriate mechanisms to ensure that the decision-making at the end of the planning process is made in a timely manner.

A strategic context for energy infrastructure

The Report recommends that key strategic and national issues, in respect of major energy infrastructure projects, should be dealt with by the Government. The aim would be to enable public inquiries, in the context of considering a planning application, to focus solely on local and other relevant issues rather than national ones. To this end, the Government proposes to develop the appropriate strategic context for the consideration of planning applications for the following energy infrastructure projects:

  • renewable generation.
  • combined heat and power.
  • nuclear power.
  • electricity transmission line upgrades.
  • gas supply infrastructure.

In respect of nuclear energy, the Government has announced that it will consider the key national and strategic issues regarding new nuclear build in a policy framework to be set out in a White Paper, which will be published at the turn of this year.

Introducing efficient public inquiries

The Government has announced that it will soon be carrying out a consultation to clarify the rules for public inquiries in respect of planning applications for generating stations with a capacity superior to 50MW onshore and 1MW offshore. The Government will also be consulting on the streamlining and simplification of the planning regime for gas supply infrastructure projects this coming autumn.

Timely decision making

The Government has also indicated that it will publish proposals that will seek to ensure that the time frame for decision-making at the end of the planning process is both appropriate and predictable.

Although the Report contains several proposals to reform the planning regime for major energy projects, the Government is expected to present more detailed recommendations once the results of the Eddington Study on the Future of Transport and the Barker Review on the land-use planning system in England and Wales have been published.

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The original publication date for this article was 19/07/2006.