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Planning Act 2008: pre-application procedures for nationally significant infrastructure projects

Response to Department for Communities and Local Government consultation

Summary

The Environment Agency recognises the importance of the arrangements for carrying out pre-application consultation and making applications to the Infrastructure Planning Commission (‘the Commission’), including transitional arrangements for applicants who have already begun to prepare applications and wish to transfer into the new arrangements.

  • We welcome our role as a statutory consultee for pre-application consultation and for applications made to the Commission, and we support the inclusion of other environmental statutory consultees.
  • We are pleased that the new arrangements take environmental issues into account through Flood Risk Assessment, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Habitats Regulations Assessment and by requiring a report on other key environmental issues.
  • We recommend that applicants should be required to provide a statement to show how they have taken climate change into account, through pre-application consultation and as part of their application to the Commission for a development consent order.
  • We welcome the Guidance on pre-application consultation and recommend that it encourages applicants to apply for environmental permits at the same time as development consent orders, an approach known as ‘parallel tracking’, so that we would have all environmental information and be able to advise the Commission.
  • We welcome the Guidance for associated development which should be strengthened to make it clear that associated development will be subordinate in scale, be subject to full environmental appraisal including Flood Risk Assessment and will require environmental permits where appropriate.

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