Clause 13
Planning Bill
11:00 am
Jim Fitzpatrick (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Poplar and Canning Town, Labour)
Amendments Nos. 99 and 125 change the airports threshold to ensure that it is wide enough to capture any type of airport development that creates additional capacity, either as a new build or as an alteration to an existing site, by at least 10 million passengers per year, or 10,000 air transport movements per year in relation to freight.
Amendments Nos. 153 and 154 are drafting amendments needed as a consequence of amendment No. 125, which is an important change in response to the consultation on the planning White Paper. It will ensure that the new regime captures all those airport projects that are likely to have nationally significant benefits.
Hon. Members will have noted that the threshold for passenger transport has been raised from 5 million, as given in the planning White Paper. That reflects the responses to the White Paper, which indicated that the proposed threshold of 5 million was inadequate. The new threshold of 10 million passengers per year captures the additional airport capacity supported by the air transport White Paper. The new freight thresholds reflect the differences in types of airport development.
Given the differences in sizes and types of airports, and their scope for future development, we believe that those thresholds set a much clearer policy on the types of airport development that constitute a nationally significant infrastructure project.