PINS keeps a clean sheet in Thames Tideway Tunnel examination

One of the features - benefits, indeed - of the Planning Act regime is the reasonably predictable timescales from application to decision.

There are three (nearly) fixed periods for stages of the consideration of an application:

•     the examination must take no more than six months from the date of the preliminary meeting
•     the Examining Authority must take no more than three months to make a recommendation from the end of the examination, and
•     the government must take no more than three months to make a decision once it has received a recommendation.

They are nearly fixed because they can exceptionally be extended, although if this happens it has to be announced to Parliament (or does it? Read on).

In fact, each deadline has been extended in one case (each) so far:

•     The Brig y Cwm energy from waste project had its examination extended by two months;
•     The Kentish Flats wind farm extension had its recommendation period extended by two weeks; and
•     The Able Marine Energy Park had its decision period extended by a total of seven months.

The Brig y Cwm extension never came to pass since the application was withdrawn before the extended period was reached. It was also an extension by the old Infrastructure Planning Commission. On that basis the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) has kept a clean sheet on all its examinations.

The Kentish Flats extension extension was done under the fees regulations rather than the Act itself, which appears to allow the extension not to be reported to Parliament. It's not that obvious that the fees regulations should be able to bypass the Act like that, although they are able to cover 'the effect of paying or failing to pay fees charged'. In the event, the effect of the Act was that the decision period had to be consequently shorter so no time was lost.

The Able Marine Energy Park decision deadline was extended three times, relating to a Crown Estate lease, unspecified reasons and ecological compensation and a railway issue respectively.

In all those cases it was the examiner or decision-maker who decided to extend the deadlines themselves, rather than responding to an application from another party. The only application I know of - until the Thames Tideway Tunnel - where a party tried to extend the timetable was the Able Marine Energy Park, where Associated British Ports tried to extend the examination by 18 months, but was unsuccessful.

Thames Tideway Tunnel news

The examination into the Thames Tideway Tunnel started on 12 September following the preliminary meeting at the Barbican. It is thus due to close in just over two weeks' time on 12 March.

The project has broken all records for:

•     the number of local authorities whose areas the project is in (14),
•     the amount of written material (2089 documents to date),
•     the number of hearings (43 days) and
•     the number of questions asked by the Examining Authority (421 first round, 155 second round).

Having said that I don't agree that its size alone means that it cannot be examined in six months, although I should declare an interest as representing an objector to the project.

The stats above reveal that it is unusual for anyone to ask for an extension to an examination timetable, but in this case the applicant Thames Water asked for a two-month extension to the examination of its own application on 7 February.

Yesterday the response of Secretary of State Eric Pickles was published on the PINS website and he has declined to extend the examination. It puts Thames Water in a tricky position having argued that an extension is 'required' (as it surely had to do to have any chance of succeeding).

The letter isn't particularly helpful as it does not give specific reasons for declining the application. There are three bullet points of things that were borne in mind, but they would apply to any application for an extension:

•     the six-month timetable is known in advance,
•     all parties should ensure that the examination is completed within six months, and
•     additional costs might be incurred from an extension that would not be incurred otherwise.

The next sentence is perhaps more telling and is that it is important to maintain confidence in the timescales laid out in the Planning Act regime. This decision will no doubt do that.

Other applicants - and objectors - are therefore on notice that it is going to be pretty difficult to persuade the government to extend an examination in any circumstances, not only for those reasons, but simply that the largest application to date didn't manage it.