Could the Planning and Infrastructure Bill be the most important piece of legislation in this parliament?
Today is the first time we have seen the bill – which is meant to clear out the blockages and get Britain growing again.
As Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said today: “Far too often, it takes years and years and years of going through these processes. We want to streamline it, make it clear what our expectations are, and then deliver for people and get that infrastructure and the houses we desperately need.”
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But, as our Battle for Growth series on Sky News has shown over recent months, when there are so many intricate and intractable blockages, this is a bold claim. Let’s look at whether the Planning Bill would help with four specific projects.
Firstly, there is the case of the Lower Thames Crossing. This would be a tunnel under the Thames to the east of London. But £1.2bn has been spent without a shovel in the ground, and the planning document runs to 359,070 pages.
This bill looks to streamline who you have to consult. It reduces the number of public bodies developers have to consult. It also moves more council decisions away from councillors and towards council officers, meaning less local democracy, which can tie a process in knots.
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Pro-growth campaigners are pretty happy with this – let’s see if it works in practice.
There is the carbon capture and storage facility on a new gas-fired power station in Teesside. Currently, the site in Teesworks sits empty, costing the developers £100m every three months.
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The bill seeks to deal with some of them, limiting from three to two the number of times “meritless” cases can go to court. But claimants don’t deliberately bring meritless cases, so it is unclear what the impact is in practice.
Meanwhile, the government has not yet found a way to deal with the international convention that allows taxpayer-funded green challenges to big projects of the sort that have delayed building in Teesworks.
Sir Keir Starmer has repeatedly said he does not want to see any more bat tunnels – the £100m, one kilometre shed being built by HS2 in Buckinghamshire to protect an estimated 300 bats in nearby woodland.
Ministers claim the bill would stop this from happening again, but experts cast doubt on the assertion.
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The bill creates a Nature Recovery Fund, which allows developers to pay into funds allowing building to proceed while wider action is taken to secure the environmental improvements. While this could work for some challenges – such as housing projects – it is unlikely to help solve the issues that caused the bat tunnel. Critics say this is because the core environmental regulations about nature habitats remain on the statute books.
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Finally, getting Britain connected remains a major challenge for this government, and they have made clear it means covering parts of the countryside in pylons.
But that’s the kind of thing that generates huge local campaigns like the ones marked on the map.
This planning bill offers £250 a year for those affected by new pylons, in exchange for curbing the right to protest. But this has been dismissed as “peanuts” by campaigners who want much more.
Meanwhile, the government is mulling much bolder reforms beyond this bill: different pricing in different parts of Britain. Cheaper bills for energy intensive business that relocates to nearby wind farms and power stations. Is this the real answer to bringing down bills?
These two have promised a revolution. Growth campaigners say it’s a good start but not enough. Local opponents say it already goes too far. Does it really change the incentives to get Britain building again? Or when we come to judge, will it really prove to have made a difference in three or four years?
