Wind Energy Planning

Shadow energy minister Charles Hendry MP has today confirmed the Conservative’s stance on proposals for the new Infrastructure Planning Committee (IPC).

Hendry wrote to the Department of Climate Change stating that the main concern arising from the current planning system is the inherent delay which has provided no certainty or guaranteed timeframe in which applications are decided. “Whilst we are wholly supportive of the principle of speeding up the process, we remain concerned that the IPC offers no recourse to the public to express their views given that decisions are made by an unelected quango” he said.

“As a result we have proposed that decisions made by the IPC should instead be recommendations to the Secretary of State with its specialist planners transferred to a ‘large projects’ team within the existing Planning Inspectorate”.

“We are very mindful of concerns that the Secretary of State might then sit on decisions, as has happened in the past, and we would therefore place a requirement on the Secretary of State to make a decision within a given timescale – probably similar to that proposed for the IPC. We will publish final details on this and also on the transitional arrangements later in the year.”

Hendry confirmed that some of the proposals made in the Planning Act will be retained and indeed strengthened. The National Policy Statements will be preserved and would be ratified by Parliament, “to give them a greater legitimacy and reduce the scope for judicial reviews” he said.

“We are concerned that the IPC will be quickly bogged down in legal challenges – from judicial reviews in the High Court to challenges in the European Court of Justice. By contrast, Conservative plans for Parliamentary-ratified National Policy Statements will speed up the planning system, whilst reducing the scope for legal challenges. Our judicial system and the ECJ will attach greater weight to a document explicitly endorsed by Parliament.”

Meanwhile IPC Chair Michael Pitt has warned infrastructure developers – including wind energy developers that they must carry out full public consultation before applications are submitted. “They should engage with as wide a variety of organisations as possible” said Pitt.