Introducing The Growth And Infrastructure Act 2013

Today's entry reports that the Growth and Infrastructure Bill has finally completed its passage through Parliament and will become the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 today.

It pinged and it ponged but the two Houses of Parliament finally agreed on the shares-for-rights provisions, and hence the whole of the Bill, today. On Tuesday, the government introduced a cooling-off period of seven days that was agreed by the Commons, and yesterday the Bill returned to the Lords to approve that and further amendments that require employers to pay for independent advice to employees considering taking up the shares for rights offer. There was no further 'Pannick attack' and the Lords comfortably voted against rejecting the amendments by a majority of 107.

Today, the Bill returned to the Commons for the fourth time to approve the amendments, which duly happened given the government's comfortable majority, despite Shadow Business Secretary of State Chuka Umunna describing the clause as a 'mad dog's breakfast'. The Bill now awaits signature by Her Majesty, which will happen later today, to make it the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 (c. 27).

What the Act does

The final ordering of the sections is quite difficult to determine in advance of the publication of the Act, given all the toing and froing that was based on an old version of the Bill - the hotly-contested 'clause 27' on shares for rights has instantly become section 31, for example.

According to my understanding, here is what the Act does based on the final numbering:

Section 1 allows the government to direct that certain planning applications to certain (i.e. poorly-performing) local authorities should be made directly to the Planning Inspectorate instead Sections 2 and 3 expand powers to award costs for planning inquiries *Section 4 allows prior approval of permitted development orders for changes of use and allows the inclusion of neighbour consultations for house extensions Section 5 removes powers to intervene in local development orders before they are adopted Section 6 restricts local authorities to only requiring reasonable additional information relating to planning applications *Section 7 allows section 106 agreements to be modified in relation to their affordable housing provisions Section 8 allows orders to set out criteria for local authorities to be able to dispose of land at less than best value *Section 9 relaxes the rules on telecomms equipment in protected areas such as...