A quick skim through demonstrates what we all knew from the outset- that democracy is overuled in favour of UK Gov objectives:
“the government’s overarching view of the rationale for intervention and impacts of this policy remains largely unchanged, but all contributions were taken into account. In particular, the government’s view remains that intervention is needed to make the Scottish electricity consenting process more efficient, thus contributing to clean power and net zero goals, while still balancing the important need to hear community voices in the process and ensure development is carried out in an environmentally sensitive way.”
This is illustrated in many of the responses where overwhelming agreement or disagreement to consultation questions was overuled as a ‘Nanny knows best’ decision if they did not fit with this Government objectives to speed up consenting of major renewable and network projects.
In other words, communities and individuals will still have a voice, as they had for this consultation, but they are likely to be ignored!
There are some very worrying concerns here, such as intention to alter really important existing Environmental Impact Regulations (based on EU Directives) to align with the proposed legislative changes, also reducing the time available to mount a legal challenge to any consent decision to 6 weeks from the existing 3 months.
The ‘transition’ arrangements once this is signed into law will be immediate, but will allow existing s.36 & s.37 applications not to have provided the required pre application information and therefore will not allow informed community/public consultation to amended environmental information, or the right of a public inquiry if a local authority objects.
Regarding the proposed 6 weeks time limit for appeals, three times as many respondents disagreed as agreed, yet it looks as though the government is going to go ahead and do what it always intended, regardless.
This consultation was simply an exercise in political correctness to show that the public had a voice and were listened to ( but were still ignored). The actual responses were so heavily against reducing the time to mount a judicial review that to go ahead with a 6 week period seems extraordinary and contrary to the Aarhus convention which aims to promote public access to environmental justice in planning matters.
It appears this proposed legislation will be heavily weighted to favour developers/applicants whilst removing rights from local authorities, statutory bodies and the public so that consent can be speeded up.
SAS
For info, you can read SAS’s full response to the consultation here
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