What South West MP's think about Great Western

[whole diary]

[John R]

There also the Development Consent Order procedure now.  Used for the Norton Bridge bypass alignment on the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) near Stafford.

I think in hindsight the use of the TWA^▸ (Transport and Works Act 1992) for the whole of Chiltern's project has been seen to be a mistake, they should probably have used permitted development rights for works rebuilding the existing railway.

I read somewhere that the TWA application for Bicester to Bedford will be more targeted on just what really needs it.

Paul

I'm sure it was a mistake, and I was puzzled at the outset as to why they went down that route. 

The DCO^▸ (Development Consent Order, or Driver Controlled Operation (that is, operation and dispatch of the train solely by the driver even with another member of staff on board), depending on context) approach does appear to be more effective too. As an example, look at the problems being had with the Ordsall Chord.  However, in that instance NR^» (Network Rail - home page) did submit a DCO but then the rules changed in 2013 and it was no longer deemed significant enough, so they had to withdraw the application and start again with a TWAO^▸ (Transport and Works Act Order - a Statutory Instrument under the Transport & Works Act 1992 which gives the powers required for a particular railway project to proceed). If they had been allowed to continue with the DCO it would all have been decided by mid 2014, as there is a very strict 12 month timetable to follow in terms of evidence and decision.

[stuving]

A DCO^▸ (Development Consent Order, or Driver Controlled Operation (that is, operation and dispatch of the train solely by the driver even with another member of staff on board), depending on context) is about planning permission. A TWA^▸ (Transport and Works Act 1992) is not, explicitly so; it allows private and public rights to be set aside - for example by compulsory purchase. When a TWAO^▸ (Transport and Works Act Order - a Statutory Instrument under the Transport & Works Act 1992 which gives the powers required for a particular railway project to proceed) is made, the government can grant planning consent itself as well, if it wants to. However, any rail project that involves 2 km or more of new track is an "NSIP" (nationally significant infrastructure project) for which a DCO is now mandatory. So it looks as if you may need both. How a special act of parliament fits into the planning regime I do not know - I think that gets specified in the act.

Of course a lot of the considerations are relevant to planning and to whatever the TWA deals with. (Does it have a name? In some ways it's our equivalent of the formal step the French have, a d^claration d'utilit^ publique.) No doubt it keeps the lawyers amused disentangling (or further entangling) these strands.

[stuving]

On closer examination, all of these planning and other consents have been thoroughly mixed up for a while, so it is really only a matter of scale. For smaller schemes they come from the same place (the local council) and for bigger ones from the government and Planning Inspectorate (who do TWAOs^▸ (Transport and Works Act Order - a Statutory Instrument under the Transport & Works Act 1992 which gives the powers required for a particular railway project to proceed) too now).

There's been a lot of tinkering with planning rules recently. It was the recent order (The Highway and Railway (Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project) Order 2013) that set the boundary between TWAOs and DCOs^▸ (Development Consent Order, or Driver Controlled Operation (that is, operation and dispatch of the train solely by the driver even with another member of staff on board), depending on context) by amending the Planning Act 2008 to read:

Construction of a railway is within section 14(1)(k) only if^

(a)the railway will (when constructed) be wholly in England,
(b)the railway will (when constructed) include a stretch of track that^
  (i)is a continuous length of more than 2 kilometres, and
  (ii)is not on land that was operational land of a railway undertaker immediately before the
    construction work began or is on land that was acquired at an earlier date for the purpose of
    constructing the railway, and
(c)the construction of the railway is not permitted development.

that's for construction; for alterations it's the same mutatis mutandis .