Advice to East Anglia One Ltd
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- From
- East Anglia One Ltd
- Date advice given
- 12 April 2013
- Enquiry type
On 8 April 2013, East Anglia One brought to the attention of the Planning Inspectorate project team a number of potential amendments that may be considered as part of the examination of the application into East Anglia One Offshore Windfarm. These included the potential inclusion of other land to enable the consideration of amendments to construction techniques, further environmental information and other documents as a result of requests made by parties since the submission of the application and amendments to the compulsory acquisition information.
Advice given
As the project is currently at Pre-examination stage, this information cannot be formally submitted to be considered by the Examining authority for the application. Therefore, the Planning Inspectorate has offered advice on how to proceed. No view has been taken by the applicant to submit this information formally nor has a view been taken by the Examining authority on whether to accept the information. See advice below:
From: East Anglia One Sent: 12 April 2013 15:36 To: 'Thompson, Helen'; 'Smith, Victoria (RU636958)'; East Anglia One Subject: S51 advice on email of 8 April 2013 Helen, Thank you for your emails. Whilst I have tried to address in turn, each of the matters raised in your email of 8 April 2013 at 10. 04am, some of the proposed changes you have outlined are interlinked and the information provided on these is limited therefore this advice should be read with that in mind. Amendments to the order limits/Compulsory Acquisition matters In your email you note that you are proposing to include land in addition to that currently included within the Order limits. Your email also refers to additional plots in relation to which Compulsory Acquisition powers are being sought. Can you please clarify whether these have been included in the recent updated Book of Reference, or would a further revised Book of Reference need to be submitted so as to include any further landowners. Connected to this query is whether these changes result in an increase in land owners whose land will be compulsory acquired and furthermore, whether you would see these changes as engaging the Infrastructure Planning (Compulsory Acquisition) Regulations 2010 which set out a prescribed procedure for the compulsory acquisition of additional land. Supplementary Environmental Information With regards any changes to the order limits you will need to consider whether these have any implications in terms of your environmental impact assessment, for example whether this might necessitate the preparation and submission of any supplementary environmental information. In relation to any supplementary environmental information that you are planning on providing, you will wish to consider whether this information would, in your view, be 'further information' or 'any other information' as defined in the Infrastructure Planning (EIA) Regulations 2009. Consultation Whilst information cannot be formally submitted to the Examining authority for consideration prior to the Preliminary Meeting, this does not preclude you, prior to the Preliminary Meeting, from consulting on any new and/or amended information that you may wish to submit. If you decide to carry out such a consultation exercise, you should give careful consideration to the persons to be consulted. You may also wish to consider whether to publicise changes to the application. The approach taken can then be explained to the Examining authority at the Preliminary Meeting. The Examining authority will need to consider if the steps taken are sufficient so as to avoid any unfairness in the process and, if relevant, whether they are in accordance with the Infrastructure Planning (Compulsory Acquisition ) Regulations 2010. This consultation exercise may, if accepted as being adequate by the Examining authority, negate the need for further consultation on these matters to be carried out during the examination. If the proposed changes to the application were to be accepted by the Examining authority this would enable the examination to take these changes into account from the start, the day after the last day of the Preliminary Meeting. In our telephone conversation on 27 March 2013 I advised that any consultation on changes at this point, prior to the Preliminary Meeting would require any responses to be returned to the applicant, not the Planning Inspectorate as suggested by yourselves. The additional information, any consultation responses and how you have taken account of these could then be submitted to the Examining authority at the Preliminary Meeting. Next Steps To enable this information to be brought into the public domain and comply with the Planning Inspectorate's openness policy, I would suggest that you follow the following approach. You submit the information that you have on the changes and further work you are undertaking to the Planning Inspectorate as soon as possible, including your consultation schedule of how and when you are undertaking any consultation and who you are consulting. This information would then be published on the Planning Inspectorate project webpage clearly stating that any queries or comments should be made to yourselves and that the information had not been considered by the Examining authority or formally submitted. No decision would be taken on the acceptance of this information into the examination until you formally submit the information at or after the preliminary meeting. This would allow you to undertake further work, such as any consultation, and present this to the Examining authority for their consideration. When issuing the Rule 6 letter, reference would be made to this information and any consultation so as to bring these matters to the attention of all interested Parties and other persons invited to the preliminary meeting in advance of that meeting. Further Comments Just to clarify a point in a previous email on 19 March 2013 sent at 12.07pm. The updated Book of Reference as submitted with the s.59 certificate has been uploaded to our website, and all parties set out in this and the previous version of the Book of Reference will be sent a Rule 6 letter to ensure that all these persons are notified of the Preliminary Meeting. In relation to the returned mail you received in relation to your s.59 certificate, please note that the Examining authority will contact the two persons concerned at the time of sending out the Rule 6 letters to explain the situation and possible next steps. I hope that this assists, but please let me know if you have any queries in this regard.
Kind regards,
Katherine
Katherine Chapman Case Manager Major Applications & Plans, The Planning Inspectorate, Temple Quay House, Temple Quay, Bristol, BS1 6PN