Want to know how to immediately strike fear into a comms or planning consultant working on an NSIP project? Suggest that they didn’t do something they said they would in the Statement of Community Consultation (SoCC) …or at least that was the way things used to be.
The context
A key element of the previous consenting regime was ensuring that consultation was carried out in accordance with commitments made in a SoCC. This was only true of the formal statutory consultation phase, so any initial non-statutory consultation was spared from the same level of detailed scrutiny.
The objective of the SoCC was to keep developers honest and ensure that any formal engagement was first placed under the microscope of local planning authorities (LPAs) on behalf of their residents. While this added level of accountability was welcome in principle, the highly prescriptive process led to a number of undesired outcomes and challenges for developers. We’ve outlined some of the key issues below.
Lack of meaningful engagement with LPAs
The SoCC process mandated a statutory 28-day consultation period with LPAs prior to finalisation and publication. Resource challenges within the LPAs meant that productive collaboration between developer and authority was often limited, and feedback would typically come back on day 28 or in many cases later.
This meant that projects essentially lost a month in their programme to develop their consultation approach, any feedback given by LPAs often resulted in disputes about what constituted appropriate consultation.
The removal of this 28-day consultation requirement will now free up developers to work more collaboratively with LPAs in a more regular and focused way.
Limited flexibility leading to clunky consultation
Should the success of a project ever have been hinged on whether the Preliminary Environmental Impact Report was available at information points in physical or USB form? In short, no it never should have been and thankfully that consideration has now changed for good.
Removing the requirement to ensure all commitments made in the SoCC have been carried out in a tick-box manner means developers can now focus on more regular proportional engagement that has a clear focus and outcome. This may mean changing approach mid-consultation to aid engagement or carrying out further engagement with specific stakeholders outside of previously pre-determined or rigid consultation periods.
It is now at the Planning Inspectorate’s full discretion whether the appropriate amount of pre-application consultation has been undertaken, not just whether consultation has been carried out in line with the SoCC.
Over-engineered consultation driven by Judicial Review fears
Since adequacy of consultation is decided at the Section 55 acceptance stage rather than at decision, objectors could previously attempt to use the Judicial Review process as a tool to bring down a project for lack of meaningful engagement.
The SoCC process forced developers to ‘gold-plate’ their consultation approach out of fears of legal challenge through judicial review. This led to over-engineered consultation that lacked proportionality and often resulted in the need for additional repeated rounds of consultation.
The new guidance throws out the need for defensive over-consultation in favour of a more streamlined and efficient approach to engagement.
It’s time to think differently
While the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 removes the statutory pre-application consultation requirements entirely, the new guidance is clear that this does not mean projects should stop all engagement. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite.
Contrary to popular belief among objectors, engagement with communities and stakeholders is crucial when developing a project. Removing the SoCC process frees developers up to be more thoughtful and flexible with their engagement, which will lead to more meaningful feedback, better consideration of design change issues and a more robust DCO application.
At Copper, we see this new shift in direction for pre-application engagement as an opportunity to do things better and more efficiently. At the heart of this new guidance is the desire to get critical infrastructure consented and built so it can bring much-needed benefit to the country. If you want to know how your project can reap the full benefit of this new approach, get in touch.
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