Clause 30
Planning Bill
4:30 pm
Jim Fitzpatrick (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Poplar and Canning Town, Labour)
Clause 30 allows the Secretary of State to intervene in an application for consent for an infrastructure project in England that has been made to a body other than the commission. In such a case, if the Secretary of State thinks that the project is of national significance, even if it does not meet the statutory thresholds set out in clauses 13 to 26, he or she may direct the authority that is considering the application to refer the application to the IPC instead of dealing with it itself. The Secretary of State can only direct an application to be considered by the IPC if the project forms part of one of the fields mentioned in clause 13(5)—energy, transport, water, waste water or waste. Amendment No. 347 is designed to clarify the drafting and provide that a direction by the Secretary of State can be made when the development is part of more than one of the fields mentioned in clause 13(5).
Amendment 348 is designed to improve the drafting for clause 30. It ensures that where the Secretary of State directs an application to the IPC from another authority, the application is to be subsequently treated as if it were an application for development consent, and the development that forms the subject of the application is to be treated as development for which development consent is required under the terms of the Bill.
Amendment No. 348 also provides the Secretary of State with a power, in such cases, to direct that certain requirements of the Bill are modified in relation to the proposed development, or are to be treated as having been complied with. The ability to modify the Bill’s requirements in relation to an application, or to deem that such requirements have been satisfied, is essential. If it did not exist it would mean that a promoter could be required to re-do all the work involved in the pre-application stage simply because the Secretary of State directed the case after the application was submitted to the local planning authority. That is not to say that further work to the application would not be needed on the part of the promoter. Indeed, in many cases it will be necessary for a promoter to alter an application so that it becomes an application for an order granting development consent. An example of that might be rewording the application to fit the format of an order, as set out in clause 32.
The promoter may also need to engage more fully with the IPC and local communities under part 5, to reflect the revised application more fully. To that end, there is no obligation on the Secretary of State to include the provisions in clause 30(2)(c) in a direction referring the case to the IPC. Nevertheless, the principle should remain that a promoter should not be unreasonably penalised through having to do additional work because the Secretary of State has decided that an application made in good faith to a local planning authority should be referred to the IPC.