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Advice to Wales & West Utilities

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Enquiry

From
Wales & West Utilities
Date advice given
24 November 2011
Enquiry type
Post

Wales & West Utilities implied that they should not have been consulted with regard to the proposed Ipswich Rail Chord as they have no interest in areas outside the Wales & West area of the United Kingdom.

Advice given

Section 42(a) of the Planning Act 2008 (PA 2008) makes provision for the developer?s duty to consult ?such persons as may be prescribed?. Column 1 of Schedule 1 of the Infrastructure Planning (Applications: Prescribed Forms and Procedures) Regulations 2009 (APFP Regs) sets out the persons prescribed for the purposes of section 42(a) of PA 2008.

The IPC has no discretion as to which consultees prescribed in column 1 of Schedule 1 of the APFP Regs should be consulted. As such, a request from a prescribed consultee asking not to receive correspondence relating to an application on which they have been consulted cannot be honoured as the IPC is under a statutory obligation to consult them. The consultee however is under no obligation to respond.

Details of why Wales & West Utilities (WWU) has been identified as a prescribed consultee can be found on page 8 of ?IPC advice note three: Consultation and notification undertaken by the IPC?, a copy of which can be found on the IPC website.

Should WWU choose to write to the IPC setting out the specific areas within which it has responsibility, it may be possible to consult them in future on that basis.