Heathrow’s Terminal 5 has finally realized its goal
The new Infrastructure Planning Commission intends to hasten progress on major building projects, such as Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Ben Willis investigates its potential to help departments realise their development plans
In February 1993 BAA, the company that runs Heathrow, submitted a planning application to build a fifth terminal at the west London airport. Two years later, a public inquiry into the proposals finally got under way; it was to become the longest of its kind in British history. After 525 sitting days the inquiry concluded in 1999, but it wasn’t until 2001 that the government finally gave the scheme the green light. Construction began in 2002, and the terminal opened in 2008 – some 15 years after the initial planning application went in.
Heathrow’s Terminal 5 saga is frequently cited as justification for the most fundamental shake-up of the current planning system since its introduction after World War Two. Next month a new agency, the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), will open its doors for business. As its name suggests, the organisation will try to ensure that long, drawn-out planning battles over pieces of infrastructure judged to be in the national interest – such as airports, seaports and power stations – become a thing of the past.
To date, most such big projects have been decided by the relevant secretary of state – the transport and energy secretaries, in the examples above – following a public inquiry run by the Planning Inspectorate. And because the reform transfers the ultimate decision-making function from elected politicians to an unelected quango, sweeping aside principles of democratic accountability that have underpinned the planning system since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, the introduction of the IPC is proving controversial. Environmental groups are already queuing up to attempt to derail the IPC’s work by threatening legal challenges against any decisions the body makes.
For those charged with implementing the new regime, however, Terminal 5 is emblematic of a state of affairs that cannot continue. With the country facing growing challenges on a number of fronts – including climate change, dwindling energy and water resources, and increased global economic competition – the IPC’s backers argue that a faster, more efficient planning system is essential if government departments are to keep the UK running.
“It’s widely accepted that the existing planning regime for major infrastructure is unsatisfactory; it’s very expensive and time-consuming, and creates a great deal of uncertainty for all interests. I think there’s total acceptance that there needs to be radical change,” says Sir Michael Pitt, the IPC’s inaugural chairman.
Planning reform
The legislation paving the way for the establishment of the IPC was enshrined in the 2008 Planning Act. Its main thrust was to do away with the complex system of eight ‘consent regimes’ governing big infrastructure projects, condensing them into one IPC-managed structure. So for a scheme requiring, say, the compulsory purchase of a piece of land and the closure of a highway, instead of seeking consent separately for each element, in future applicants will be able to gain approval for both under one application.
The other important change concerns the process of inquiry and decision-making. Under the new arrangements, all applications for projects above a certain size will automatically default to the IPC (see box) rather than going before local authority planning committees. And instead of holding an adversarial inquiry, in which QCs are able to cross-examine witnesses, the IPC will adopt what Pitt calls an “inquisitorial” approach: expert commissioners will hear relevant evidence from carefully selected witnesses, and make their decisions accordingly.
According to Pitt, such a streamlining of the system will make it easier for applicants to navigate, ultimately saving both time and money. “Under the old arrangements there were eight different consent regimes, and a public inquiry process that could be notoriously drawn out and inconclusive,” he says. “It’s estimated that the time for approving an application will be reduced from 100 weeks to 35, and that the new regime will save the country some £300m a year.”
National Policy Statements
The introduction of the IPC will have important implications for the work of government departments. The areas over which the commission will have responsibility have been divided into 12 main categories, each of which falls within the remit of one of three departments – energy and climate change (DECC), environment (Defra) and transport (DfT). Covering themes such as renewable energy, fossil fuels, airports, transport networks and water supply, these categories will form the basis of 12 so-called national policy statements (NPSs).
Pitt says the NPSs are crucial to the work of the IPC because they will set the framework within which it will judge applications and ensure that its decisions reflect government policy.
“NPSs are a statement of what secretaries of state want to happen,” he explains. “So there will be much greater clarity, for example, about energy policy: the extent to which we will be using renewables, nuclear power and other forms of energy generation. When they’re finally published as drafts, those NPSs will clarify for everyone concerned exactly what central government policy is in these areas.”
Overseen by the Department for Communities and Local Government, DECC, Defra and the DfT are currently going through the process of drawing up the 12 NPSs, with the first draft statements expected later this autumn. The DfT has been charged with producing three NPSs – on airports, ports and strategic rail and road networks. A spokesman says the latter two statements will be published in draft form in the autumn, while the draft airport NPS is likely to be out by early 2011. Initially, he adds, the bulk of applications relevant to the DfT’s work that will need to be referred to the IPC will be for improvements to motorways and rail lines, but in the medium term a number of big applications are expected, including BAA’s plans for the controversial third runway at Heathrow.
Meanwhile, Defra is also working on three NPSs, on water supply, waste water and hazardous waste. According to a spokeswoman, it is expecting to consult on the waste water NPS next spring, hazardous waste in the summer and water supply by the end of next year.
But it is arguably for DECC that the new planning system is most significant. The department is leading the UK’s drive to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, and much of the major infrastructure covered by the new arrangements will play a vital role in helping the country meet this target. As a result, the department has been given responsibility for drawing up six of the NPSs: an over-arching one on energy policy, and separate statements covering nuclear energy, renewables, fossil fuels, electricity networks and gas supply infrastructure.
Carbon opportunities
A spokeswoman for the department explains that with the previously labyrinthine consent procedures streamlined, projects will be able to pass through the planning system in less a year. This in turn, she says, will help the UK to cut its carbon emissions: “The new system has the capacity to give more certainty to those wishing to invest in energy infrastructure and to get this infrastructure consented quicker. We hope it will remove some of the barriers between us and the move towards a low carbon future.”
Yet the advent of the IPC has not been without its concerns. Although broadly supportive of its introduction, even some of the bodies that stand to gain most from its inception believe the new arrangements hold a number of flaws.
The wind energy industry, for example, is potentially one of the biggest beneficiaries of the revamped system, with applications for offshore windfarms widely touted as a key area of business for the IPC. On one level, this sounds like good news for the UK’s bid for a low-carbon economy. Yet according to Chris Tomlinson, director of programme strategy at the British Wind Energy Association, the size threshold set in the new legislation for onshore windfarms – which still account for the bulk of windfarm applications – is so low that the vast majority of schemes currently stuck in the planning system will remain exactly where they are.
“The IPC only determines onshore projects over 50 megawatts,” Tomlinson explains. “Below that size, they still get determined by the local authority, and already there’s a huge bottleneck there. A far greater number of projects are smaller in size than 50MW, so the effect of the IPC on onshore wind generation will be negligible.”
The opponents
Green groups, meanwhile, have been especially vocal in their criticisms of the IPC, arguing that because a scheme’s promoters and expert witnesses will not be subject to cross-examination by a QC, the new system will not allow proposed developments to be properly tested. Furthermore, they claim that placing decisions for potentially highly controversial pieces of new infrastructure in the hands of a few appointed experts will at a stroke nullify the system’s accountability.
“We need infrastructure, but our problem comes with who is accountable for making the decisions,” says Hugh Ellis, environmental advisor to Friends of the Earth. “The important thing about the IPC is that their decisions are not directly accountable to Parliament. You have 35 bureaucrats who will approve the third runway at Heathrow, which will result in 33,000 people’s homes being demolished… That makes it the most powerful decision-making body that we can find constitutional precedence for in the UK. These decisions are not accountable.”
Perhaps scenting a populist cause, the Conservatives have pledged to scrap the IPC in its current guise and integrate it into the Planning Inspectorate, the body that currently runs planning inquiries. “We regard it as unacceptable that decisions of that magnitude are taken by a body that doesn’t have ultimate democratic accountability,” says the party’s shadow planning minister, Bob Neill.
Neill acknowledges that the planning system needs speeding up, so he says the Conservatives would retain many of the changes introduced by the current government, such as the national policy statements and the unification of the old consent regimes. The key difference, he says, is that under the Tories the process of drawing up the NPSs would be debated in Parliament and subjected to votes in both houses. Departmental secretaries of state would retain the final say on decisions and, Neill says, local people would retain the right to cross-examination.
“We think what we’ve come up with is a pragmatic package that means we keep the sensible improvements but deals with our principal objection – the lack of democratic sign-off – and actually strengthens cross-examination where it’s legit, but prevents it being abused,” he argues.
Conclusion
Pitt takes these concerns in his stride. He stresses that consultation will be a fundamental part of the new system, with the public able to have their say at three separate stages: “The first is in relation to the drafting of the NPSs, when the principles are established; secondly at the pre-application stage, when there is an obligation on the applicant to undertake wide-ranging consultation; and thirdly at the evaluation stage, when commissioners will be hearing evidence and representations made by members of the public.”
During the inquiry into an application, it will be up to a commissioner which members of the public, if any, should give evidence, and Pitt is somewhat vague about how witnesses will be chosen. However, he says that witnesses will have to be selected carefully to avoid the IPC facing judicial review – the final recourse against any IPC decision. “Any person or organisation that believes the commission has in some way acted unreasonably during the process can mount a judicial review,” he says.
As for the threat of an incoming Conservative doing away with his organisation, Pitt seems unfazed: “There is a very great measure of cross-party agreement on the changes that are needed – and that includes such fundamentals as the NPSs, and also the need to have an organisation that can process these major applications. There are various ways this can be implemented: the IPC is one of them, and it is my job to make it as effective as possible,” he says. “If there is a change in government policy, we’ll address that at the time.”
INFO: What the commission will be deciding on
Power stations in England or Wales that will generate over 50MW if onshore, or over 100MW offshore. Includes all nuclear power stations
Airports in England that will be capable of handling a minimum of 10 million passengers per year, or 10,000 movements of cargo – for example, Heathrow’s runway three
Dams and reservoirs in England of over 10 million cubic metres for new developments or extensions
Highways: trunk roads and motorways where the secretary of state is or acts as the Highways Authority
Hazardous waste facilities in England that will take at least 100,000 tonnes per year for landfill, or 30,000 tonnes per year for other kinds of disposal such as incineration or anaerobic digestion
Topics: carbon emissions, carbon opportunities, Economy, hazardous waste, infastructure, technology
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