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Advice to RWE npower

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Enquiry

From
RWE npower
Date advice given
12 January 2012
Enquiry type
Email

I would like to request your advice regarding the appropriate terminology to describe the submission to Natural England of a GCN license application, during the pre application stage, in order to establish that the proposals would satisfy the criteria for the issue of a license. We submitted this application in November 2011, Natural England have made comments and our consultants are amending the application accordingly.

We understand that no license will be issued but when NE are satisfied with our proposals, they will indicate that they would be minded to approve such a license application. Therefore, we have referred to this, in our ES and in the report of the Habitats of Protected Species, as the 'dummy' license application.

Is it appropriate to refer to the 'dummy application' given that NE will assess it as if it were a real application but not issue a license?

Advice given

As there is no specific term in legislation for such an application, it is up to the developer to decide what to call such an application in order to get a 'minded to approve' letter. You should, however, make it very clear what it is that you are obtaining and why - eg why it isn't simply an actual application. Even if you may have explained this to secretariat staff/the pre-application commissioner during pre-application, you should make sure that the application documents are self-explanatory so that anyone looking at them without prior knowledge can fully understand what is being applied for and why.

IPC Advice Note 13 (http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Advice-note-13-Preparing-the-draft-order.pdf) also states "the explanatory memorandum supplied to the IPC by the developer should identify the authorisation, the reasons why the developer is following this route and should state how close the developer is to achieving consent of the authority concerned. Where a developer is seeking separate authorisations or licences these should be separately listed in the application submitted to the IPC (see DCLG Application form guidance)."