Rookery challenge lost and other NSIP news

This entry is a round-up of significant developments on nationally significant infrastructure projects.

Rookery South

On Wednesday and yesterday the High Court heard a challenge to the publication of the Development Consent Order for the long-running Rookery South energy from waste project. Rather than reserving judgment (i.e. issuing the judgment at a later date) Mr Justice ('Per'? Actually John) Mitting dismissed the claim yesterday.

The claim was on two grounds. First, the compulsory acquisition process followed by that application had been inadequate and secondly the time taken between the original application (August 2010) and the publication of the Development Consent Order (DCO) (February 2013) was such that the government should have at least considered requiring an update of environmental impact assessment data.

Is this finally a useable consent for the first application to be accepted by the then Infrastructure Planning Commission? The application was made on 5 August 2010, and has emerged at last from the Planning Act regime (assuming FCC Environmental don't appeal) on 6 February 2014, 1281 days later. It is unlikely that it will be built, though, unless someone else takes it over (FCC Environmental, perhaps?), because its American promoter Covanta Energy has decided to pull out of the UK.

The 1281 days roughly breaks down into three reasonably equal periods: the main application, examination and decision process; then special parliamentary procedure (SPP), where the examination was repeated before a committee of MPs and peers; and then judicial review. Although they all took about the same time, the second and third did not actually change anything except delay the project, alhough an additional financial contribution was promised as a result of SPP. I am glad that the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 has nearly (see below) got rid of the SPP stage and the reforms to judicial review will reduce the chance of, and speed up, challenges.

Thames Tideway Tunnel

Until the Thames Tideway Tunnel application came along, the largest number of hearings for one examination had been the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station application, with 14 days of hearings. Yesterday was day 42 of hearings into the Thames Tideway Tunnel, the 'supersewer' proposed to be built underneath the River Thames in London.

In dramatic scenes at the hearing yesterday, the promoter of the project Thames Water announced that it was going to apply today to extend the examination of its own project by two months. I won't go into the ins and outs of this save to say that it is the largest application to be submitted to date, involves the largest number of local authorities (14) and has had the largest number of examination documents so far (1324 and counting), so perhaps fitting the examination into the six months expected under the Act was too ambitious.

It is also notable that at this week's hearings, one of the barristers appointed by the five-member examining authority conducted part of the examination of witnesses - I'm not sure if that's happened before. Having had a front-row seat I can say it was inquisitorial, in the Spanish sense.

If extended, it will be the first examination to take longer than six months, although as a professional pedant I have to say that Covanta Energy's other application for the Brig y Cwm energy from waste project also had its examination extended, but was withdrawn before it got to the extension.

Able Marine Energy Park

Consent was received for the Able Marine Energy Park on 18 December 2013 (another record-breaker in having its decision period extended three times), and although the changes to special parliamentary procedure brought in by the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 came into force in June 2013, it was decided that these would not apply to applications made before October 2012 such as this one.

The project is therefore starting its special parliamentary procedure journey with the laying of the order on Monday. I may be biased, OK, I am biased, but it does seem a bit pointless that Parliament is undertaking a duplicate procedure that it has already voted to get rid of. Thousands of new jobs on Humberside await the outcome.

Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon

Newspapers are reporting that the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon 'planning' application will be made today. This will be the first application for such a project under the Planning Act 2008, although in the Act it simply comes under the category of electricity generation along with wind farms and nuclear power stations. It will have a capacity of 320MW, comfortably above the 100MW threshold for offshore projects.

This will be the 44th project to be applied for under the Planning Act regime, and the third this year already. It's full steam ahead.