Four Years Of Blogging On The Planning Act 2008

Today's entry looks back on the last four years of blogging on the Planning Act 2008, and forwards.

Exactly four years ago on 17 July 2009, the first Planning Act 2008 blog entry was posted. Since then, a quick calculation reveals that I have written nearly 370,000 words on the Planning Act regime. That's more than the longest Harry Potter novel (which one?), but some way to go to beat War and Peace at about 562,000 words. It's only a matter of time before Leo is left for dust, though.

At the time of the first post there were no National Policy Statements, even in draft, no applications for nationally significant infrastructure projects had been made and the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) hadn't even been set up. Just one piece of secondary legislation had come into force by then - the brief Infrastructure Planning (National Policy Statement Consultation) Regulations 2009. For the first two or three months the blog was like an election night broadcast before any results had come in.

The regime

How things have changed. The ninth NPS is about to be designated - actually that's not quite as much progress as would have been expected in 2009. Applications have been made for 35 projects, ten Development Consent Orders have been approved, and the Infrastructure Planning Commission has come into being - and gone again. The Planning Act itself, secondary legislation made under it, guidance from the government and advice from the IPC and then the Planning Inspectorate have all been extensively amended after first being issued. If that wasn't enough, the first major review of the regime is due next year, the aptly-named '2014 Review'.

The projects

Against this background, some of the country's most controversial infrastructure projects have been trying to get consent. And some of the least controversial - the number of representations on applications has varied from 5 to nearly 10,000. The Planning Act regime treats those two impostors just the same, it seems, squashing the first and drawing out the second across the same timescales. Some applications have succeeded, some haven't stayed the distance and others have been given consent but are now being challenged in the courts. Notably the first application to be accepted is still stuck in the Planning Act regime some 1077 days after the application was made. On the other hand some applications have emerged unscathed, unchallenged and on time.

The government

The government, meanwhile, have...