Planning for Major Infrastructure Projects

The Planning Act gained Royal Assent on 26 November 2008. Much of the Act is concerned with new procedures for planning and approving major or ‘nationally significant’ infrastructure projects for energy, transport, water and waste. The Act also contains a number of other smaller-scale reforms to existing town and country planning legislation, particularly the Town & Country Planning Act 1990 and Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

All these reforms will need secondary legislation before they can be implemented and the following information should be read as an early interpretation of how the Act may work. This will be updated as and when the secondary legislation comes into force.

The following pages set out infromation on two key areas of the Planning Act:

• National Policy Statements (NPS) on nationally significant infrastructure: the types of ‘infrastructure’ that NPSs will relate to and when specific NPSs are expected to be published.

• Planning procedures for individual nationally significant infrastructure projects: the role of the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) and the procedures (particularly inquiries) it will work to.