Overview

Norton Rose provides an update of the PPP projects currently being tendered in the UK, plus a topical analysis entitled ‘The Major Infrastructure Unit - putting democracy back into decision making’.

The coalition government has confirmed plans to set up a Major Infrastructure Unit to deal with large-scale infrastructure projects and abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), which was established under the Planning Act 2008 in order to speed up applications for major projects by providing a fast-track one-stop-shop “development consent order”. The change is likely to take place in April 2012.

Proposals to redress a perceived “democratic deficit” were a recurring theme in policy debate leading up to the election in May 2010 as was the question of whether planning powers should continue to be exercised at a regional level, as advocated by Labour, or devolved to a local level, as proposed by the then opposition. In a letter to developers, Michael Pitt, chairman of the IPC, stated that the government wanted to bring forward primary legislation to replace the IPC with “fairer, faster decision making” and an “efficient and democratically accountable fast-track process for major infrastructure projects”. The legislation will take the form of a Decentralisation and Localism Bill, which the government hopes will become law in 2011.

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