The UK government has announced its new Planning and Infrastructure Bill will come into force in spring, a move set to hasten the development of new renewable energy projects.
A new working paper has been unveiled, outlining plans to streamline the development of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), including large-scale renewable energy developments. The objective of these reforms is to deliver “a faster, more certain, and less costly NSIP regime” in order to achieve clean power commitments and other aims set out in the government’s Plan for Change.
Part of the proposed changes to the NSIP process suggests a more flexible approach to solar projects. The working paper notes that solar farms tend to be “relatively compact, follow a standard design, and raise a relatively limited number of issues”, and thus are “relatively straightforward compared to other NSIPs”.
As such, potential reforms suggest that a more flexible NSIP application process for solar projects, including granting more discretion to the Examining Authority as to the precise nature and type of information needed to make a determination on a development consent order (DCO) may allow more solar projects to be approved in less time, supporting the government’s 2030 clean energy goals.
Additionally, plans for reform under the Planning and Infrastructure Bill suggest requiring National Policy Statements (NPS’) – documents which set out the needs case, general policies and assessment principles of specific types of NSIP applications, including energy – to be updated at least every five years.
Furthermore, more frequent updates will be required if significant policy or strategy updates, such as the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, are introduced, ensuring that the NSIP process is kept updated in line with the energy requirements of the present time.
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves said: “I am fighting every single day in our mission to kick start the economy, deliver on our Plan for Change, and make working people better off. That includes avenues that others have shied away from.
“Too often the answer to new development has been “no”. But that is the attitude that has stunted economic growth and left working people worse off. We need to do things differently and that journey began as soon as I started at the Treasury in July. These are our next steps and I can say for certain, there is more to come.”
Backing the builders, not the blockers
The news comes just days after an announcement from the government that processes allowing for the “cynical” filing of legal challenges against NSIPs will be reformed. Current appeal procedures allow legal challenges to be brought against proposed NSIPs in three separate forums, but new changes to the system will allow just two attempts to legally challenge a proposed project. Furthermore, legal filings deemed by a judge to be “totally without merit” will be denied the right to appeal in a higher court. The announcement was teased by prime minister Kier Starmer in a post on LinkedIn, where he said he was “backing the builders, not the blockers”.
The working paper notes that in 2021, the average time needed to secure a development consent order (DCO) under the NSIP system was 4.2 years, up from 2.6 years in 2012. The increasing volume of documentation needed to complete the NSIP process has been deemed to be majorly delaying the pace of approvals.
