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Advice to Mark de Pulford

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Enquiry

From
Mark de Pulford
Date advice given
19 September 2018
Enquiry type
Email

I am currently reading the Environmental Statement, to ensure that any representations engage directly with what the application.

I find that the problems created by the length and complexity of the Statement are greatly exacerbated by the following:

  1. the parts are out of order: your/the Developer's listing of the 45 documents does not appear to be arranged logically - or at least not by any method I have been able to discern - why is this?
  2. the titles of many of the individual document listings give no indication of the nature and significance of their contents - why not?
  3. problem 2 is compounded because the Developer has in many cases bundled together unrelated documents, so that e.g. a significant appraisal of noise effects is found under scores of historical maps - who does that help?
  4. problem 2 is further compounded because the Developer has in some instances used identical titles for different documents - why has that been allowed? (I can see that your listing attempts to overcome that by adding detail but the underlying situation remains unsatisfactory)
  5. there are other irritating inconsistencies in the Developer's titling which, though relatively minor, tend to add to an impression of disregard for public accessibility.
    In short, the documentation is difficult to access and navigate. The presentation is so opaque that it gives rise to the suspicion that the applicant has got something to hide.

Be that as it may, the problems seem likely to rebound on the relevance of the representations coming to the Examining Authority and ultimately on the purpose of the process.

Mindful that the UK arrangements must comply with European norms and standards governing planning applications of this kind, can you please ask the Developer to sort this out?

Advice given

The manner in which application documents appear on the National Infrastructure Planning website is an ongoing issue which arises from the way in which our internal databases 'talk' to the website. At present there is not a practical solution.

However, to resolve the issue in principle, for each project we produce an Examination Library which arranges the application documents and all representations etc made to an examination in a logical order. An Examination Library for the Manston Airport application/ examination has been published and can be accessed by clicking the large blue button under the Documents tab: https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/south-east/manston-airport/?ipcsection=docs

You may also be assisted by the Applicant’s Navigation Document (Doc 1.4) available here: https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/south-east/manston-airport/?ipcsection=docs&stage=app&filter1=Application+Form