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Advice to Various developers

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From
Various developers
Date advice given
6 February 2013
Enquiry type
Email

Information on the changes to Special Parliamentary Procedure (SPP) through the Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Advice given

This advice is to draw your attention to the Government proposals to make certain changes to Special Parliamentary Procedure (SPP) through the Growth and Infrastructure Bill currently before Parliament. These measures include:

  • removing the provisions for SPP where local authority and statutory undertaker land is compulsorily acquired for nationally significant infrastructure projects;

  • providing discretion for the Secretary of State to provide that SPP will not apply when open space is compulsorily acquired for a temporary purpose for a nationally significant infrastructure project;

  • providing additional circumstances in which the Secretary of State can provide that SPP will not apply when open space is compulsorily acquired for a nationally significant infrastructure project where no exchange land is available (or available only at a prohibitive cost) and there is a strong public interest in this; and

  • ensuring that where the SPP process is triggered, Parliament will consider a Development Consent Order to the extent that it authorises the compulsory acquisition of special land in respect of a nationally significant infrastructure.

If these measures are enacted, they will be brought into force by means of an order. It is the Government’s intention to provide in the order that they will apply to an application for development consent under the Planning Act involving the compulsory acquisition of special types of land provided that two conditions are met:

(1) the application was received by the Secretary of State after 18 October 2012 (the date on which the Bill was introduced into Parliament); and

(2) the Examining authority has not by the date on which the Bill takes effect, informed the interested parties of the fact that its examination of that application has been completed under section 99 of the 2008 Act.

If an application meets these requirements, then the provisions described above will be applicable to it. You have recieved this correspondence as, on your current indications, your application will be submitted before the Bill is enacted.

It should also be noted that the Growth and Infrastructure Bill will remove certification procedures where the Secretary of State considers that SPP is not required in respect of commons, open space or fuel or field garden allotments.

This change will only apply to applications for development consent made after the relevant bill provisions come into effect. These certification procedures will therefore continue to apply to existing applications.