If approved by Parliament, the Order will require all proposed major sewer applications to submit a single application to the Planning Inspectorate, rather than submit potentially multiple applications to many local planning authorities.
The Order (4-page / 45KB PDF) was laid before Parliament on 26 March and will be considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. It will be considered under the 'affirmative resolution procedure', which requires positive approval by Parliament before it can be made.
NSIPs are major infrastructure developments that are defined in the Planning Act 2008 and have a separate planning regime. All NSIPs are required to follow a specific application procedure, called a Development Consent Order.
The responsibility for decision making for NSIPs is granted to the Planning Inspectorate, formerly the Infrastructure Planning Commission, as laid out in the Planning Act 2008.
The Order proposes to extend the definition of NSIPs in the Planning Act 2008 to include, "the construction or alteration of infrastructure for the transfer or storage of waste water.
Criteria for assessing whether a particular project should be treated as a NSIP would be included in separate section of the Planning Act 2008.
The Order safeguards current and proposed applications from becoming invalid under the new regime by including a section that states that "anything done by a promoter of such a project prior to the commencement of this Order may be treated by the Secretary of State as compliance with specified provisions of the 2008 Act, if it would have amounted to such compliance if it had been done after this Order came into force,".
To come within the proposed definition, the main purpose of the infrastructure must be to transfer waste water for storage, or for the storage of waste water prior to treatment, or both, the draft Order said.
The infrastructure project must also be expected to have a capacity for the storage of waste water exceeding 350,000 cubic metres. All alterations to infrastructure that meet the above requirements would also be classed as a NSIP.
