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Advice to David Harvey

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Enquiry

From
David Harvey
Date advice given
16 September 2014
Enquiry type
Post

The applicant (Palm Paper Ltd) requested a review of its draft development consent order (DCO) and land plans.

Advice given

We have reviewed your draft DCO and land plans and have the following comments:

It is noted that you have re-named your plans to the ?Land Plan and Site Location Plan? and ?Site Layout and Works Plan?. However, in DCO Article 2(1) and Article 14 the plans are referred to as ?the land plans?, ?the works plans? and ?the location plans?. References to the plans in the Order must correspond exactly with the headings on the plans. It is advised that you ensure that references in the DCO to named plans accurately reflect the name given to the plans so that, on acceptance, the SoS can be satisfied that the development for which consent is sought is adequately described and clearly identifiable from the DCO and plans.

In addition we have identified a few drafting matters which will need to be amended at some stage and, while they are not necessarily acceptance issues, you may wish to alter them before submission. These are set out below:

In recent DCO?s granted by DECC (East Anglia ONE and Rampion Offshore Wind Farms) the Secretary of State has removed all references to ?decision maker? in the Order and replaced them with ?Secretary of State?. You may also wish to do this to accord with current DCO drafting.

Article 2(1)

?Scheduled works? is defined as the numbered works specified in Schedule 1 to this Order or any part of them as the same may be varied pursuant to article 3, however article 3 does not contain any power to vary the scheduled works.

?Order limits? is defined by reference to the ?land and works plans?, the draft plans you have provided are called the ?Land Plan and Site Location Plan? and the ?Site Layout and Works Plan?. As already stated above, the actual names of the plans must be accurately reflected in the DCO. This is particularly important in the definition of order limits which defines the project for which development consent is sought. All references to the plans must be consistent throughout the DCO and must reflect the actual names of the plans submitted with the application.

Article 14

The plans to be certified must accurately reflect the names of the actual plans, i.e. the ?Land Plan and Site Location Plan? and ?Site Layout and Works Plan? and not refer to ?the land plans? ?the works plans? and the ?location plans? if there are no plans with these names.

All the plans listed in Requirement 5 should also be included within Article 14 as plans to be certified.

Reference in this article is made to an Outline CEMP. Previously requirement 10 referred to a CEMP to be approved in accordance with an outline CEMP, this requirement has been modified and now refers to the CEMP being approved in accordance with the principles in the ES. If no outline CEMP is intended to be submitted with the application reference to this should be removed from this article.

Requirement 1

There is no need to repeat here definitions that are already set out in Article 2(1) such as the ?relevant planning authority?, ?order limits? and the ?environmental statement?. It would be preferable for all definitions to be in Article 2(1) instead of having separate definitions for the requirement section.

Requirement 19

This requirement refers to the ?Commission?. This reference should be removed as the Commission no longer exists. It is not clear whether this is intended to refer to the ?Secretary of State? or the ?relevant planning authority?. Save for requirement 20 (see below) all other approvals are required from the relevant planning authority and not the Secretary of State. If amended to the relevant planning authority this requirement would give the planning authority the power to amend any of the approved details without limitation. This is a tailpiece and should be limited to non-material changes which are unlikely to give rise to any materially new or materially different effects from those assessed in the environmental statement.

Requirement 20

This requirement requires approval of the Secretary of State for a scheme for management and mitigation of artificial light. This is contrary to all other requirements which require approval of the relevant planning authority. If this is intentional reasons for this discrepancy should be given in the Explanatory Memorandum.

I would also like to take this opportunity to request a copy of your electronic index. This is the documents which we use to correctly name all published application documents on our website. Please note that we may now publish application documents as soon as practicable once they have been submitted (with your permission), and therefore it is particularly important that we have time to check the electronic index before submission. Further guidance on the electronic index can be found in the annex to Advice Note 6.