Planning reforms must go further to prevent judicial review acting as a costly break on major projects, infrastructure chiefs have warned.<\/p>\n
Witnesses giving evidence to the Public Bill Committee told MPs the most critical weakness in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill legislation \u2013 which aims to accelerate the building of new homes and infrastructure \u2013 was its failure to clamp down on the delays caused by judicial review.<\/p>\n
Sir John Armitt, former chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, said government recommendations to reduce the opportunities for judicial review did not go far enough and that \u201cpeople will find ways\u201d around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudicial review constantly acts as a brake, and influences those who are developing projects to try to cross that bridge before they get there: you put in more mitigation than ideally you would wish, which raises the cost, and you potentially finish up with a more expensive project than ideally you would have had,\u201d he told the committee.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is the nature of people trying to second-guess what is going to be raised and how the judicial review will be handled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armitt said he was unconvinced that proposals in the government\u2019s planning reform working paper, published in January, would be enough to address the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach year of judicial review is likely to potentially add a year to the process, and that is why it is difficult to see that these changes will benefit the overall process by more than six to 12 months, at the end of the day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Robbie Owen, director of the National Infrastructure Planning Association, agreed the bill should be strengthened to tackle delays relating to judicial review and said the\u00a0recommendations in the working paper were \u201creally quite modest\u201d and related largely to the permission stage of a review.<\/p>\n
\u201cApproximately 70 per cent of judicial review applications get permission and go forward, therefore we need to focus beyond the permission stage,\u201d he told the committee.<\/p>\n
He said the bill could be amended to allow Parliament to use a \u201csimple one-clause bill\u201d to confirm decisions to give development consent for projects of national priority.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that is a very good way for Parliament, where it wishes, to express its support for a big, critical project,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Owen also called for a further streamlining of the Development Consent Order process to allow the standard process to be varied on a case-by-case basis, another idea that had been trailed in the working paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI encourage you and your officials to have another look at that, because there is a justification for giving some degree of flexibility to reflect the nature and requirements of individual projects and how the standard process might need to be adapted to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n