Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to expedite nationally significant infrastructure projects.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The government made 21 decisions on Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) in the first year of this Parliament. This compares with the first year of the last Parliament in which only 15 decisions were made and represents the highest number of annual decisions made since the NSIP programme was introduced in 2011. 27 NSIP decisions have been made so far since the start of this Parliament.
Following acceptance by the Planning Inspectorate, NSIP applications are being processed on average 50 days quicker in this Parliament than in the last.
Through the relevant provisions of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we are seeking to reduce the average time it takes reach a decision on an NSIP project from its peak of 4.2 years under the previous government.
To achieve our Plan for Change milestone of fast-tracking 150 planning decisions, we will need an average of 32 decisions per year from July 2025. While we have not achieved this in our first year, we expect the rate of decisions to continue to accelerate alongside the already seen increase in projects entering the pipeline.