The list below is a record of advice the Planning Inspectorate has provided in respect of the Planning Act 2008 process.
There is a statutory duty under section 51 of the Planning Act 2008 to record the advice that is given in relation to an application or a potential application and to make this publicly available. Advice we have provided is recorded below together with the name of the person or organisation who asked for the advice and the project it relates to. The privacy of any other personal information will be protected in accordance with our Information Charter which you should view before sending information to the Planning Inspectorate.
Note that after a project page has been created for a particular application, any advice provided that relates to it will also be published under the ‘s51 advice’ tab on the relevant project page.
Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived. View the archived advice.
North Wales Connection
Enquiry
I have just read the North Wales Connection scoping opinion. While it is clear dormice are out of scope, it is not clear if brown hare are out of scope also. Please could you advise?
With regard to sections 3.50 - 3.52 of the Scoping Opinion, can I interpret from this that the effect of EMFs in a high radon environment is also out of scope? Radon is particularly high in some areas of Anglesey, through which the proposed development will pass, and the combined effects of EMFs and radon together can be quite different to the two in isolation.
With regard to section 3.53 of the Scoping Opinion, whilst many projects are planned for Anglesey and will happen in tandem for the construction phase, this is not the case for the operation phase. There is only one project that will impact 30 km of Anglesey. Was it really the intent of the SoS to out-scope the operation phase of the proposed development? It would not be difficult to assign impacts to this single project as section 3.53 suggests.
It would appear to the the SoS's opinion that impact on house prices is out of scope for the North Wales Connection (Anglesey), but is in scope for the North West Coast Connection (Cumbria). I can think of no rational reason why this should be, and it seems a little unfair. Please could you explain this.
With regard to section 3.60 of the scoping Opinion, should the Wylfa Newydd project not go ahead, the existing line would be largely redundant and no doubt removed. As such, it could be argued, the existing line is not part of the 60 year baseline scenario. Please could you comment on how the cumulative baseline has been created and what, exactly has been determined to be the "do nothing" scenario against which proposed scenarios are compared.
Advice given
The Scoping Opinion for the North Wales Connection Project was adopted by the Planning Inspectorate on behalf of the Secretary of State and in accordance with the Infrastructure Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2009. In making the Opinion the Planning Inspectorate had regard to information provided by the Applicant in its Scoping Report and to responses from consultation bodies. The purpose of the Scoping Opinion is to set out those aspects/matters which the Secretary of State considered could result in likely significant effects and so should be assessed by the Applicant and presented in their Environmental Statement (ES). Interpretation of the Scoping Opinion and preparation of the ES is a responsibility of the Applicant; accordingly if you have any comments on the approach to the assessment in the ES during the pre-application stage these should be directed to the Applicant.
