Planning Magazine is carrying an article today about an apparent failure to follow the consultation rules in the Planning Act 2008. The issue is that where you have a site specific National Policy Statement the Secretary of State is required to consult with various local authorities about how it should publicise the proposed NPS. The authorities are the host authorities and their neighbours. Planning says it has made Freedom of Information Act requests of the hosts and the neighbours for the ten nuclear sites and that the majority say they were not consulted.
Friends of the Earth have picked this up as well. Can one expect a judicial review challenge or will the Government go back at this stage? Either way it is very time consuming. Going back to consult on how to publicise would then have to be followed by publicity itself and a period to receive views. Consultation has to be done with an open mind.
Or the Government might choose to brush this off. It's response so far is reported in the article. The trouble with that approach is that the Act says that judicial review proceedings questioning any step taken by the Secretary of State in preparing a statement cannot be commenced until after the NPS is adopted. That could be some time from now.
We hold no professional view on whether or not we should have nuclear power stations, nor by when, but if the Government's predictions of when nuclear power stations are needed are right, there is not much room for delay.
Here is the article.
I was at the Department of Energy and Climate Change "Consultation" Event in Exeter yesterday when the point was made that although South Wales would be affected by Hinckley Point and Oldbury, the consultatation was only carried out in England.
Posted by: Paul Barkley | January 22, 2010 at 03:47 PM