1000: A thousand Planning Act 2008 blog posts

Nearly 14 years ago, on Friday 17 July 2009, the Planning Act blog was launched. Although the Planning Act 2008 had received royal assent on 26 November 2008, the regime had not yet been switched on for applications – that came in March 2010. Some initial steps had been taken – the now-defunct Infrastructure Planning Commission was being set up, and regulations about the National Policy Statement consultation had been published.

It was a good time to launch a blog in this area, as there was and still is no shortage of developments on an almost daily basis. The evolution of practice and guidance, legal challenges, changes in the law and policy, legal challenges, and eventually progress on applications continue to occur and be of relevance to all those using the regime. Plus, our website had just been revamped and had a facility to host a blog.

Today, the 1000th blog entry is published. That’s a bit over 5000 days later, so a hit rate of one issue every five days. The first entry promised that it would explain ‘what [the Planning Act 2008] does, comment on how it is likely to work, and follow it through its implementation over the coming months’ I piously hoped ‘that this blog will become essential reading for anyone considering promoting or likely to be affected by a major infrastructure project’. I think it has fulfilled that promise.

So what’s happened since then? A lot. 12 National Policy Statements have been designated (the water one *still* hasn’t, despite being laid in Parliament in April), and six of them are being revised. 173 applications have been made under the Act (including those that were then withdrawn or not accepted before being resubmitted), and 116 have been granted: one airport, three gas pipelines, two gas storage, one biomass, three energy from waste, 22 fossil fuel generation, one hydroelectric, two nuclear power, 17 offshore windfarms, two onshore windfarms, two solar, one tidal energy, four harbours, three hazardous waste, 33 highways, one ‘other’ pipeline, eight power lines, five railways, four strategic rail freight interchanges, and one waste water project.

The regime has, however, remained largely intact since its inception. Although the original decision-making body, the Infrastructure Planning Commission, was abolished by the Localism Act 2011, having decided one single project (Rookery South), its role transferred to the Planning Inspectorate fairly seamlessly (from the outside, at least). Decisions are now taken by secretaries of state in a similar fashion. The current review of the regime does not propose any fundamental changes.

It has definitely slowed down, though, as the blog authors noted in an article in Monday’s Daily Telegraph (Subscription required). This is largely due to out-of-date National Policy Statements, inexorable growth in environmental assessment, and much more frequent decision-stage extensions.

The blog has had one or two scoops, like when revisions to the original energy NPSs were accidentally findable on Google before being officially published, but the authors have been careful not to betray any confidence.

We hope you have been kept informed and entertained by this blog over the years. It has been celebrated at our offices this week with an event incorporating a quiz, and after we have recovered from that, it will continue to keep you updated and entertained as this fascinating legal regime underpins the provision of the infrastructure that keeps the country going while achieving policy goals such as net zero.

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