Planning rules

[CdBrux]

One area the new government says it will look at is simplification of planning rules (my words) to make development easier. I assume this would also apply to infrastructure.
I came across this blog post which looks at Portishead re-opening saga and especially the paperwork involved, I am sure the more knowledgeable here could find many ways to pick fault, but I post it more for the general point around paperwork. What are the chances that, in the next couple of years, this will have been significantly streamlined?

https://benhopkinson.substack.com/p/a-train-to-nowhere

The joint local transport plan reserved £1m to study the project in the late 2000s, and Network rail announced a feasibility study on re-opening the line in 2009. Public consultation took place in 2015, and Chris Grayling, then Transport Secretary, announced £31m of funding for the line in April 2019 (when the line was meant to open by 2021).

With this funding confirmed, the North Somerset Council began work on its planning application.

In total, the application and all the associated documents come out to 79,187 pages. If you printed that out, end to end, there’s 14.6 miles of paperwork, more than 4 ½ times the length of the line that is to be reinstated.

Within those nearly 80,000 pages, there are 17,912 devoted to the environmental statement. That’s 3.3 miles of paper trying to determine if rail transport is good for the environment. There’s 1,174 pages devoted to bat technical appendices, 215 to newts, and 1,810 to vegetation management.

It then took three years for the transport secretary to approve the planning application. This is all to replace the existing, derelict tracks with new rails and add two stations in communities that are desperate to have a rail link. If the planning process was shorter, it’s likely that spades would be in the ground now (or the railway may even be open), rather than having to review the project again. Speeding up the planning system would shorten the time that projects like this are exposed to the threat of being reviewed and cancelled, as infrastructure spending is often the easiest item for a government faced with a budget squeeze to cut.

 

[eldomtom2]

The Victorians funded many of the railways that we still rely on today by building new homes, towns, and industries alongside new tracks.

Did they? I was under the impression that funding railways by development was fairly rare in the UK (Metroland being a notable exception) - usually lines were built based on the industry and population that was already there.

 

[CdBrux]

Did they? I was under the impression that funding railways by development was fairly rare in the UK (Metroland being a notable exception) - usually lines were built based on the industry and population that was already there.

As I said I am sure people can find many ways to pick detailed holes to the article, the point was for a more general discussion about overall simplification of the approvals process

 

[The exile]

Did they? I was under the impression that funding railways by development was fairly rare in the UK (Metroland being a notable exception) - usually lines were built based on the industry and population that was already there.

Or on the promise of everything that would miraculously materialise and then didn’t.
Certainly for many locally-promoted lines, the hope was that the railway would open up vast new markets for any local industries (outbound goods traffic or inbound “trippers”!) Sometimes it did, usually not enough.