128: Planning Act 2008 - first IPC application made?

This is entry number 128, first published on 30 April 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 be notified when the blog is updated, with links sent by email, click here.

Today's entry marks the expected date of the first application to the Infrastructure Planning Commission.

Today is the day that, according to the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) website, it is due to receive its first application, which is for an energy from waste facility at Rookery South in Bedfordshire.  The promoter is Covanta Energy, and the project is to produce 65MW of electricity and so is above the 50MW threshold for a generating station in the Planning Act.

I'm not sure that the application will be made today, given that some re-consultation had to take place, but the more interesting point is whether one will be able to tell that an application has been made and why it may matter.

According to the Planning Act, once an application is made, the IPC must notify the applicant within 28 days that it has accepted the application (or not).  If it has accepted the application, then the promoter is obliged to publicise the fact in various publications, and notify all the pre-application consultees, giving at least 28 days for representations (i.e. what will mostly be objections) to be made.  Note, however, that there is no deadline for the promoter to announce the acceptance of the application. 

Thus the process is: promoter starts pre-application consultation [at least 28 day interval] pre-application consultation ends [indeterminate period] promoter makes application [up to 28 day interval] IPC accepts application [indeterminate period] promoter publicises acceptance [at least 28 day interval] representations made.  There are no public notifications between the start of pre-application consultation and the announcement of the acceptance of the application.

Why does this matter? One reason is that local authorities may make an 'adequacy of consultation representation' (ACR) if they think that the consultation was carried out inadequately (or adequately, presumably, but I can't see many of those being made).  Note that it is only the requirements to consult the right people and consult on, publish and follow the Statement of Community Consultation (SoCC) that can be the subject of an ACR, rather than whether the promoter took the consultation into account properly (which would be a more tempting issue to complain about). 

Note also that it is the wider set of local authorities that can make ACRs, i.e. not just the authority/ies where the project is to be situated, but their neighbours as well.  For a project situated in a single local authority area, the IPC could receive up to 39 ACRs!  Rookery South actually straddles two local authorities, Bedford and Central Bedfordshire (see map below), but there are only a mere 14 additional neighbouring authorities, by my calculations.

When should local authorities make ACRs?  The earliest they could make them would be twoards the start of the pre-application consultation, if it became obvious that some consultees had been missed out, but rather than complain to the IPC, the local authority would save everyone time and money if it notified the promoter so that the latter could correct the problem. 

The latest that an ACR could be made would have to be just before the IPC decides to accept the application, but the local authority won't know when that is until it is too late.

Government guidance recommends that ACRs are made as soon as possible after the end of the pre-applcation consultation period.  If the applicant makes the application a few days later and the IPC accepts it a few days after that, there may not be much time, particularly if the point made in the ACR is that the local authority concerned was not consulted, which it may not discover for a while.  Furthermore, the guidance recommends that if someone other than the local authority has concerns about the pre-application consultation, they should take it up with the promoter, and then if still not satisfied, their local authority.  That won't give much time for the local authority to draft and send an ACR either.

Perhaps it would help if the IPC (a) states on its website when it has received an application and (b) does not decide too quickly whether or not to accept it, so that there is time for ACRs to be made.

Update: late today (30 April) the IPC has changed the expected date for this application to be 'mid July 2010'.  The first two applications on the list are now a biomass plant in Northumberland and a windfarm in Wales, expected on 1 June.