Planning Bill

My Lords, I shall be moving government Amendment No. 123 in this group. It is a purely technical amendment, simply a drafting change for the sake of clarity. The provisions on nationally significant infrastructure rely on a definition of development that is not necessarily completely the same as that used in Part 11 in relation to the community infrastructure levy. Our amendment ensures that the distinction is maintained. The noble Baroness will be delighted to hear that we accept Amendment No. 69. She has persuaded us—as my noble friend Lord Berkeley did in the previous group—that it can improve the Bill in respect of ““clusters”” of projects, such as groups of wind farms in close proximity to each other which should be considered together for a better overview of their cumulative impact. It is not our intention that the Secretary of State will have a power to direct projects in different fields to the IPC together as a ““cluster””. They must be in the same field together. The noble Baroness’s point is very well taken in that regard. We are therefore glad to accept Amendment No. 69. On Amendments Nos. 63 and 67 and why the words ““or forms part of”” are included in the Bill, as the noble Baroness knows, we have set out thresholds in Part 3, and a project that meets these thresholds will subsequently be designated a nationally significant infrastructure project. Clause 31 ensures that to the extent that development will be carried out to further this overall project, development consent will be required for that development. Of course, it will be up to individual promoters which development works they choose to include in an application for development consents. At the very minimum, they must include those works that have a direct bearing on the construction of something which meets the thresholds in Part 3. However, there may well be additional works, both onsite and elsewhere, that serve supporting functions to the main NSIP works. They might be needed for the purposes of preparation or finishing, to facilitate benefits, or to mitigate impacts. We want promoters of NSIPs to include in their development consent applications all relevant works, whether they are directly related to the main Part 3 thresholds or whether they form part of the wider projects. Therefore, under Clause 30, such development which ““forms part of”” a nationally significant infrastructure project will in future require development consent. A promoter may wish to carry out development which is unrelated to a nationally significant infrastructure project. We want to ensure that promoters can carry out such development separately and enjoy existing permitted development rights where appropriate. As I mentioned in Committee, we do not want to create a loophole that allows promoters to salami-slice NSIP development into smaller chunks of work, which could therefore slip under the thresholds. For example, harbour facilities are not defined as such in the Bill but will often involve construction of a range of different things, such as a port access road, a container terminal, warehousing, berths for ships and so on. Together, they would make up a whole viable project. The proposed facilities need to be looked at as a whole to see whether the quantity threshold will be met. If they will, we want to ensure that development consent is required for each part of the development that forms part of the proposed project. On that basis, we believe that the words ““or form part of”” are required to ensure that a developer cannot get round the need for development consent by separating out the types of development that go into an NSIP. I hope that, with that explanation, the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw her amendment and take some comfort from the fact that, where we have been persuaded by her arguments in relation to the later amendments, we have accepted them.