991: Interurban roads, rail freight and examination news
Today’s entry looks at the NIC’s preliminary findings for interurban roads, rail freight news, and other DCO examination news.
National Infrastructure Commission’s interurban roads preliminary findings
The National Infrastructure Commission has written to the Treasury to share its ‘key findings to date’ on interurban road networks. Their key recommendation is that ‘the government needs an interurban transport strategy, built around a single vision to drive economic opportunity, narrow disparities between regions, and protect and enhance the environment’. More specifically, they recommend:
- a clear understanding of the mechanisms by which national roads support growth, namely by facilitating the flow of trade in services and goods;
- acknowledgement that the functioning of the economy is highly dependent on the effective maintenance and resilience of the existing road network, which therefore warrants priority investment; and
- a focus on improving the links that are most important for connecting our cities. This requires a focus on the links that will be most significant for trade between major regional cities.
In its more detailed and technical appendix, the NIC clarifies the first point that it is not intended to upend traffic modelling, stating that ‘these are not a replacement for the analytical approaches used in assessing individual schemes or for tools such as the DfT’s modelling of national transport networks’ but instead that ‘they are intended to be complementary’. The NIC also rightly focuses on the national nature of dealing with Net Zero, noting that ‘since travel by road is economically and socially valuable, the priority should be accelerating the transition of the vehicle fleet, and all feasible measures to hasten this transition should be considered.’ It makes the same ‘national’ argument in connection with air quality: ‘If design cannot achieve sufficient mitigation, this will need to be addressed through phasing in line with fleet electrification, which, in the long term, will bring air quality impacts down, though not eliminate them.’ On the tools that should be prioritised, it further states that decarbonizing construction is a vital part of the sustainability of ongoing improvements in road connectivity, and as with operational emissions, an understanding of options, preferences, and substitutability will be an important part of a strategy’s robustness.’
The NIC’s report on National Policy Statements is expected to be published on Tuesday 18 April 2023 and will be covered in next week’s blog post.
Railly freightening news
We noted that the organisation Britain Remade advocated in its PowerBook that ‘the [relevant departmental] Secretary of State should be responsible for making a final decision on whether to accept projects for examination.’ We noted the counter-vailing considerations in that approach, but also noted that it does seem slightly problematic that two of the three applications forced into withdrawal in the last three months have been resubmitted, one of them in nine days, and then accepted, and the other one, the Hinckley Rail Freight DCO project, has been accepted for examination following its forced withdrawal and resubmission.
Leaving aside the merits of Britain Remade’s proposals, assuming a future Labour government, or indeed this government, wanted to take that radical step, what would it look like? Well, by my calculations, projects that are withdrawn or refused at the first hurdle are first contacted between Day 18 and 21 of their 28-day acceptance period. That gives the relevant Government department at least six days to make a decision based on the preliminary view of the Inspectorate. The difficulty arises in that the relevant applicant may wish to make representations based on those preliminary findings – how would that work? Well, it could work based on the fact that applicants are already given an opportunity to comment on those preliminary findings; it may well be the case that the Inspectorate forwards that information onto the relevant department.
In other rail freight news, an amendment has been made to the Northampton Rail Freight DCO granted in 2020. The change would enable some occupation of warehouses prior to the connections to the ‘main line’ rail network, which cannot be delivered by the promoter but instead requires work by Network Rail. We previously noted that the draft National Networks NPS (out for consultation) included removing an existing requirement that ‘significant’ elements of rail freight projects should have rail connectivity from the outset, and instead states that rail connections should be delivered in a timely manner. Notwithstanding that change has not yet taken effect, the Secretary of State has found a way around this issue:
‘The Secretary of State accepts that on a narrow interpretation of paragraph 4.88 of the NPSNN, the Development would not provide a significant element of directly rail-connected warehousing units as a result of the proposed change. However, he considers that, reading paragraph 4.88 with paragraphs 4.83 and 4.85 of NPSNN, the proposed SRFI would be compliant with the policy in the NPSNN as a whole in that it would be developed in a form that can accommodate a rail link.’
Perhaps there is no need for the amendment to the NPS on this point!
Hear no evil and other DCO news
The Slough Multifuel DCO project has had its Rule 8 letter issued amending its timetable, and the Examining Authority is proposing that there be no hearings. This is perhaps unsurprising: there are a grand total of five relevant representations, and one of them is to confirm there are no comments.
The London Resort DCO project has been removed from the Inspectorate’s Register of Applications, and in a rather novel step, the Secretary of State has written to the promoter to ask for an update.
The A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet project had its day in court; TAN sought permission for judicial review on grounds relating to potential hedgerow loss, need, and carbon emissions. Those grounds failed, but it then renewed its claim in open court. Following that oral renewal hearing, the Court has ruled that all grounds are unarguable and has refused permission for the judicial review to proceed.
The Examining Authority on the Lower Thames Crossing DCO project has made a procedural decision refusing a request for an extension in the pre-examination period but also indicating that a ‘Programming Meeting’ will be held, a DCO first as far as I am aware.
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