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. These more minor changes are included in the Planning Act 2008 section of this website.

The following pages set out information 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 works to.

The current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government has announced its intention to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission. This will require an Act of Parliament, and so is unlikely to take place until at least Spring 2012. There is more information on the Government's plans for major infrastructure planning throughout this section, which will be kept up to date as changes are made.