Advice to John Oliver
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- From
- John Oliver
- Date advice given
- 21 December 2010
- Enquiry type
Mr Oliver wrote to the IPC to ask whether a proposal for a wind farm in Powys, Wales, which currently is proposed to comprise 4 X 2 to 2.5MW turbines (producing 10 -12MW), but which may be revised to 4 x 330kW wind turbines, could be considered as a Nationaly Significant Infrastructure Project despite its smaller scale.
Advice given
Thank you for your email. The Infrastructure Planning Commission was created by the 2008 Act to independently determine applications for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP), as defined in the Act.
The government has committed to abolishing the IPC and the draft Localism Bill contains provision to that effect, transferring responsibility for the determination of NSIP applications to the Secretary of State. The government intends to create a new Major Infrastructure Planning Unit (MIPU) to administer these applications, and has committed to putting transitional arrangements in place for applications currently being prepared or under consideration. The bill does not amend the NSIP definitions or the general route by which applications are made or administered in its current form.
An onshore wind farm could automatically be an NSIP under certain conditions, one of which is that it has a generating capacity over 50 megawatts. (S14 and S15 of the 2008 Act.) You do not describe your scheme as meeting that threshold. Under current arrangements, projects under that threshold would not be NSIPs and applications for them would not automatically be made to the IPC or the forthcoming MIPU.
In answer to your direct question, it is in principle possible for smaller projects which do not meet the thresholds to nonetheless be determined as NSIPs. Developers could ask the Secretary of State to direct that a project that does not meet the thresholds in the Act should be considered an NSIP and determined as one. (S35 of the 2008 Act.) The Secretary of State has never made such a direction. Whether or not to do so is a matter for the Secretary of State, and if you would like to consider that route you should make any enquires regarding it to DECC. You should also take your own legal advice upon which you can rely.