Accelerating Infrastructure

• One of Britain’s most pressing problems, as the new government has acknowledged, is how difficult it is to build the infrastructure we need. Infrastructure in Britain is much harder to build than it was historically or than it is today in continental Europe
• Notoriously, the Lower Thames Crossing has spent 15 years in planning, at a cost of £300m, without construction beginning. It is taking longer to approve projects, and even those that are approved are increasingly subject to a range of legal challenges
• In a new paper, Dr Samuel Hughes – co-author of ‘Foundations’ and Head of Housing at the Centre for Policy Studies – suggests a series of specific changes to speed up infrastructure delivery
• The recommendations, developed in conjunction with leading planning lawyers, focus on streamlining the consenting process, empowering governments to make key decisions in the national interest, fixing ambiguous laws, and updating the policy documents governing decisions to make them clearer, more proportionate and more effective

This report from the Centre for Policy Studies proposes a series of reforms – some of which could be implemented in days – to transform Britain’s ability to build new infrastructure and boost economic growth.

‘Accelerating Infrastructure: How to get Britain Building More, Faster’ is written by Dr Samuel Hughes, CPS Head of Housing and co-author of the recent ‘Foundations’ essay on why Britain is stagnating.

Large projects in Britain can currently take years to navigate the planning process and favourable decisions are increasingly overturned by judicial review, as highlighted by the Prime Minister earlier this week. In his speech to the International Investment Summit on Monday, Keir Starmer used the example of the East Anglia 2 wind farm which finally gained planning consent after an extensive and expensive process, only to be delayed by a further two years following judicial review.

The report, developed with the assistance of leading planning lawyers and with a foreword by barrister Isabella Tafur, puts forward a range of reforms designed to create a planning system which gives clarity to applicants about what will be permitted and clarity to decision-makers about what the law allows them to do.

Many of the recommendations could be implemented swiftly and without primary legislation, including:

• Accelerating the planning process by fixing statutory guidance
• Automatically granting project changes where there is an environmental benefit. Currently projects are prohibited from making changes where there are ‘materially new or materially different environmental effects’ – including where the environmental effects would be better
• Updating National Policy Statements to bring them up to date with recent legislation

Further recommendations, which would require legislation, include:

• Empowering government, via the relevant departments, to make decisive rulings in the national interest
• Reforming the Aarhus Convention, which limit the cost of bringing wrongful legal challenges. If this is not possible, the report recommends withdrawing from the convention
• Removing the source of many judicial reviews by reforming legitimate expectations rules and consultation requirements