Officials working across the UK’s public infrastructure sphere have outlined how new rules for consenting Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) will allow them to overcome “familiar challenges”.

The Planning and Infrastructure Act was officially written into law in December and intends to help overcome certain challenges of the UK’s planning system and give confidence to businesses to invest in vital infrastructure.

A key part of the Act is to streamline judicial reviews for NSIPs and tighten provisions surrounding legal challenges. Certain government decisions on major infrastructure will have the number of attempts at judicial review restricted. This will see only one attempt allowed in cases deemed by the court to be “totally without merit”.

Speaking at a Westminster Forum today, 2 February, experts from across the suite of infrastructure sectors weighed in on what the major policy upheaval for NSIPs will achieve for them.

Department for Transport (DfT) deputy director for transport planning Samantha Collins-Hill explained how the Planning and Infrastructure Act has given transport projects the upper hand to overcome “familiar challenges” including “delays caused by unavoidable legal challenges”.

“Now, those challenges haven’t disappeared overnight – I wish they had, but they haven’t,” she said. “What has changed, what we do have this year is a clearer set of tools to address them.

“It’s a key message, we must use them, we must put them into practice.”

She said that for transport projects in particular, “it’s going to really matter” as it will “give clearer expectations from promoters, for decision makers, for planners and obviously communities alike”.

Pinsent Masons partner and head of infrastructure planning and government affairs Robbie Owen put this reasoning into the context of a real-world example discussing the A303 tunnel near Stonehenge.

The Stonehenge Tunnel project, officially known as the A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down scheme, was a long-contested infrastructure plan to replace a congested section of the A303 with a 12.8km dual carriageway, including a 3.3km tunnel passing beneath the Stonehenge Unesco World Heritage site.

In October last year, transport secretary Heidi Alexander took the definitive step of moving to revoke the Development Consent Order (DCO) for the scheme .

“The reason that that project was cancelled by the incoming Labour government was because it was delayed by over four years by two development consent orders and two sets of judicial review,” Owen said.

“In the meantime, there was something called inflation, which meant that the scheme was then considered by the incoming government to be no longer offering good value for money, quite apart from any affordability considerations.

“I think the purpose of this regime, the purpose of the Act is to speed up [consenting] and make [it] less burdensome.”

Other targeted measures introduced in the Planning and Infrastructure Act will see consultation requirements for NSIPs streamlined and the national policies against which infrastructure applications are assessed, known as National Policy Statements, (NPS) will be updated at least every five years.

National Highways head of third party infrastructure Peter Fisher detailed how these key changes will allow the roads body to “help sustainable development come forward”.

“That means working with other stakeholders, that means working with other consultees to make sure that we are giving clear, timely and policy grounded advice,” he said.

“Some of the changes we’re talking about will absolutely help with that, such as changes to the consultation approach and the revision of NPSs will really helps us keep focus on where the important advice is and that adds most value to key decision makers.”

Away from transport, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) tidal development head Shaun Benzon explained how the introduction of spatial development strategies in the Act has enabled more integrated collaboration across regions for the proposed Mersey Tidal scheme. Aspiring to be the world’s largest tidal power scheme, Mersey Tidal would see a barrage built across the Mersey between Liverpool and the Wirral harnessing tidal energy while also providing flood defence and increased walking and cycling connectivity.

The spatial development strategies are due to introduce a system of “strategic planning” that aims to boost growth by looking across multiple local planning authorities for the most sustainable areas to build.

“What’s useful about the spatial development strategies are that they are adapting to changes in the national planning and policy frameworks,” Benzon said.

“Also, it allows you to set strategic priorities and ambitions across infrastructure including housing and energy for the Liverpool City region which covers the six local authorities around the Mersey area.

“There’s been a lot of really positive change happening in that space.

“Being a regional combined authority means that we’re in a really good position to try and bring all of these pieces together and try and deliver against these national policies with our own spatial plans which are more bespoke.”

Aside from all the detail within the Act, the key desire of this new legislation is for the government to speed up the planning process of NSIPs.

Speaking at the forum, Planning Inspectorate infrastructure professional lead Pauleen Lane detailed the effect the changes are having already. She first described how the Planning Inspectorate itself was going through a huge amount of change which did seem like “absolutely everything is changing simultaneously all at once”.

“To a certain extent that is true but then it’s also inevitable in a world in which you have fast-changing technology expectations and indeed demands on the system,” she continued.

In order to think about “what makes a difference as you go through the NSIP process”, Lane outlined a couple of stats.

“The average time for handling is now less than six months, so the average examination will be shorter than six months,” she said.

“That is split between slightly smaller projects, which might be in the four and a half to five month time frame versus the biggest and most complex ones, which are probably still hitting six months.

“On average, the time period is coming down, similarly, recommendation is now less than three months and we are hoping we’ll continue to shorten a little bit.

“I should also say that this is with no intention of handing further problems over to consenting departments and is simply on the basis of streamlining what we do to greatest effect.”

Like what you've read? To receive New Civil Engineer's daily and weekly newsletters click here.