St David’s Day will see the dawn of a new planning regime in Wales, as Welsh Ministers seek to reform the planning process to deliver a system that is fair, resilient and enables development. The latest reform will mean that, as of 1st March 2016, planning applications for nationally significant projects will be made directly to Welsh Ministers rather than local planning authorities.
The regime was introduced through the Planning (Wales) Act which became law in July 2015. A series of secondary legislation is now in place to require planning applications for Developments of National Significance (DNS) to be made directly to Welsh Ministers.
DNS projects are varied, and will range from major energy projects with a generating capacity of between 10 and 50 MW, to transport infrastructure projects, hazardous waste facilities, and development on dams and reservoirs. The UK Government will retain its responsibility for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects that fall outside the DNS thresholds.
Ben Lewis, Director at Bilfinger GVA in Cardiff comments,
“These devolved powers bring significant changes to the planning regime in Wales. They are long overdue, and should speed up the planning process for major schemes that have, in the past, suffered from often protracted decision-making which has led to delays in delivery of important infrastructure provision.”
“The DNS regime has the same objectives as the Development Consent Order regime and seeks to speed up decision making on key infrastructure projects that are of strategic importance to Wales. The regulations also include provisions for the refund of application fees for non-performance which should ensure decisions come through the system in line with the statutory timetable.”
The DNS regime also allows for secondary consents, including those for ancient monuments, listed building consent and conservation consent. However, unlike the DCO regime, these powers do not extend to compulsory acquisition.
He advises though that these changes will bring new responsibilities for developers.
“Developers need to be aware of the implications of the new regime on project timescales and costs, especially in the energy sector where all renewable projects above 10MW will be determined by the Welsh Ministers. The statutory fees for a DNS application are around the £40,000 mark, but this excludes the costs of the Inspector’s time and the logistics of an Inquiry, which may be considerably more.”
There are one or two anomalies in the system, most notably for onshore wind where the actions of the UK Government to remove onshore wind from the NSIP regime would have resulted in 10MW – 50MW onshore wind farms in Wales being determined by Welsh Ministers and wind farms outside that range being determined by Local Planning Authorities. However, the DNS regulations are in the process of being amended to bring all onshore wind developments within the remit of the Welsh Ministers.”
Ben, who leads Bilfinger GVA’s specialist energy planning team in Cardiff, and has recently submitted and managed two Development Consent Order (DCO) applications for large-scale energy generation projects in Wales, adds,
“The new DNS process reflects the existing appeal procedure in Wales, but is heavily front-loaded to ensure consultation is carried out prior to submission, which is a similar approach to the National Significant Infrastructure Projects regime. A maximum of 12 months is permitted for pre-application consultation following notification of the application to Welsh Government. The decision making process (from when the application is declared valid) will take up to 36 weeks. The benefit of the system is that, if it works, developers will have more certainty over the timing of planning decisions than they have had in the past. The DCO regime has delivered certainty since it was introduced. We will have to wait and see if the DNS regime does the same.”