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Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived.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.
General
Enquiry
I am writing regarding a query on the Planning Act 2008 requirements of an NSIP. I would like to find out whether it would be possible to gain any clarification whether the requirements that qualify a generating station as a NSIP within the Planning Act 2008 would include the generating stations associated gas pipeline that exceeds the 16.093 km (Pipelines Act 1962) requirement. Where in general a pipeline that exceeds this limit, and is not a gas transporter, is classed as a NSIP and therefore must have a single DCO application.
It is not clear by reading between the lines that a pipeline exceeding the requirement above could fall under the main generating station projects DCO application, but it also does not make sense why these would be separated, unless the pipeline was of such an extent (e.g. possibly >100 km), that the Secretary of State deems the pipeline to be a NSIP in its own right, and therefore would request a single DCO application.
Advice given
If I correctly understand the crux of your enquiry, there is nothing to prevent more than one Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) being included in a Development Consent Order (DCO), and there are precedents for this (see for example the East Midlands Gateway Rail Freight Interchange and Galloper Offshore Wind Farm). In effect, an NSIP generating station and an NSIP pipeline could be delivered through the same DCO.
I would caveat that development for which development consent is required a matter of fact, in accordance with the provisions set out in sections 14 to 30A of the Planning Act 2008; but the Planning Inspectorate cannot take a decision on whether development constitutes an NSIP until such time as the associated application for development consent is formally submitted.
