Chas Geiger
Political journalist
Sam François
Political journalist
PA Media
Large infrastructure projects such as nuclear power plants, rail lines and wind farms will be built faster under the new planning rules, the government has promised.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said Nimby (Not in My Back Yard) “blockers” to major infrastructure projects will be less likely to “thwart growth” through repeated legal challenges.
Currently, infrastructure projects can be challenged in court up to three times – ministers intend to reduce this to just once in most cases.
Conservative Secretary of State Kevin Hollinrake accused Labor of “pushing forward Tory initiatives” but warned their efforts would fail if they continued to “block our attempts to cut EU red tape “.
Existing rules expose projects approved by elected officials to years of delays and hundreds of millions of pounds in extra costs, the government said.
Opponents of these plans currently have three options for obtaining permission for a judicial review of a major infrastructure project in England and Wales: writing to the High Court, attending a hearing and appealing to the Court of Appeal.
Under the government’s proposals, the written phase would be removed, meaning activists would have to convince a judge in person.
Furthermore, any challenge deemed “totally without merit” by a High Court judge could not be brought before the Court of Appeal.
Scotland has its own system of legal and judicial review.
Ministers said the overhaul of the rules, via the next Planning and Infrastructure Bill, would send a strong signal to global companies looking to do business: the UK is a “great place to invest”.
Sir Keir said it was time to fix “a broken system that has slowed our progress as a nation”.
“For too long, blockers have had the upper hand in legal challenges – using our legal processes to thwart growth,” he said.
“We are ending this culture of defiance by taking on the Nimbys and a broken system that has slowed our progress as a nation.”
Labor has put planning reforms at the heart of its mission to boost economic growth, also promising to deliver 1.5 million new homes in five years.
During the election, Sir Keir pledged to support “the builders, not the blockers” and promised Labor would prioritize infrastructure to boost growth and develop green energy.
The government has promised to make 150 decisions on major infrastructure projects by the next election.
The latest announcement follows a review by planning lawyer Lord Banner, who recommended streamlining the judicial review process so claimants have “fewer bites of the cherry” when seeking permission to bring a claim.
The review found that around a third of applications for judicial review of major projects were refused permission to proceed, although it is not clear how many of these were found to be “completely without merit”. “.
Welcoming the changes, Lord Banner said “reducing the number of attempts at authorization for truly desperate cases to one should weed out the worst offenders”.
“I look forward to seeing these changes contribute to a step change in the pace of infrastructure delivery in the months and years to come.”
According to the government, more than half of decisions on nationally significant infrastructure projects go to court, causing an average delay of 18 months and adding millions of dollars to costs.
Officials pointed to cases such as the approval of Sizewell C in Suffolk, where campaigners spent 16 months seeking permission for a judicial review despite their case being described as “indisputable” at every stage.
However, only some of the grounds in Sizewell C were found to be “completely without merit”, meaning that the remaining grounds could still have been revisited by the Court of Appeal.
Responding to the government’s proposals, Hollinrake said: “While we welcome the government’s Conservative moves to streamline the planning system, Labor is blocking our efforts to cut EU red tape, such as neutrality nutritional, so that they can align more closely with the The European Union will retain Britain. »
