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Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived.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.
Norwich Northern Distributor Road (NDR) View all advice for this project
Enquiry
I am emailing about Deadline 9 and the request for comments on the applicant?s draft DCO please.
When the wording in Deadline 9 refers to the applicant?s draft DCO ? is this referring to a draft DCO which is ?owned? by the NCC or the ExA please? In other words, if this is what the ExA is proposing to recommend to the Secretary of State, are community groups to assume that the ExA is intending to support the NDR?
Parties are invited to comment on the applicant?s draft DCO, but at what level and in what detail please? We fundamentally disagree with the Draft DCO. Do we therefore rehearse our arguments once again on the basis that the ExA is intending to support the NDR?
On specifics, do we address for example, the clause on Complementary Measures and why we believe that it is inadequate?
Advice given
The ExA are indeed asking for comments on the applicant?s draft DCO. This was the edition submitted by the applicant on 9 October attachment 1
I do not know what the ExA are proposing to recommend to the Secretary of State, but they do have a duty to present an implementable DCO with their report. This is without prejudice to their recommendation. Even if they recommend that the scheme is not consented, they must provide the best possible draft DCO so that the SoS could implement it if they chose to do so.
Interested parties are also invited to comment without prejudice. Even if you recommend that the scheme is not consented, you are asked to provide comment as to how the draft DCO could be improved if it were to be implemented. This is analogous to providing planning conditions to mitigate the impacts of a scheme which you oppose.
Constructive comments should be provided in considerable detail, but it is not worth rehearsing arguments which have already been made. On your specific example, arguing that the Complementary Measures clause is inadequate would not be helpful. If the clause were to be removed as a result of your comments, there would be no clause. However, if you were to suggest alternative wording which would better meet your objectives, this may be substituted for the original.
It is very common for statutory parties to engage in this manner; while a regulator such as Natural England may oppose a scheme because of its negative impacts, they are often willing to engage with solutions for how these impacts would be mitigated if the scheme were to be consented. Doing so is not considered to weaken the arguments against the negative impacts.
Providing such constructive engagement could be considered as an insurance against the worst possible scenario, which would be a scheme consented without mitigation of negative impacts. Arguing against a scheme on principal results in two possible outcomes ? refusal or consent of the scheme. Providing possible mitigation measures results in two different outcomes ? refusal or consent of a mitigated scheme.
