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Advice to Anna Pickering

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Enquiry

From
Anna Pickering
Date advice given
7 July 2010
Enquiry type
Email

The Highways Agency asked for clarification on the following paragraph from IPC letter dated 21 May 2010: "It would be helpful if you could clarify how and in what format you propose to submit information about previous consultation to the IPC. If the information is to be included in the consultation report you may wish to explain the extent to which the project was taken account of in any relevant policy making processes including, for example the statutory Development Plan consultations in the intervening years between developing the route options and the present day. As the relevant draft National Policy Statement has yet to be published, it is likely that the policies within the Development Plan (the adopted Regional Spatial Strategy plus the relevant Local Plan/Local Development Framework) will be important and relevant to the Commission?s consideration of the application."

Advice given

The purpose of referring to consultations held on statutory development plans in the IPC letter of 21 May 2010 was simply to provide an example of previous consultation which may have referred to the proposed project and which, although preceding the statutory pre-application consultation process under the Planning Act 2008, you may wish to make reference to in your consultation report. There are many potential consultation exercises that may have been carried out in the past and it is for the applicant to decide what material to include in its consultation report.

Although our letter of 21 May 2010 touched upon, as you describe "adherence to the NPS - and ...local / regional planning documents" and in the same paragraph also upon "the requirement to report consultation" we were not intending to establish any causal or dependent link between these two. It is not mandatory for a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) to have been consulted upon in statutory Development Plan processes prior to an application being made.