The Royal Town Planning Institute welcomed the National Infrastructure Plan as an improvement on last year's attempt and said it was a move towards a national spatial plan.
"The National Infrastructure Plan 2011 is an important step forward in outlining the Government's priorities for major infrastructure projects across the country in a way that will be useful to planners, developers, communities and investors," said RTPI president Richard Summers.
"We are particularly pleased to see the links that have been made between housing growth and infrastructure investment but the plan needs to go further to show the links with business development and environmental protection in our towns and cities and rural areas."
The RTPI identified eight other significant changes:-
- an obligation on statutory bodies to promote sustainable development through the consents process as soon as the NPPF is adopted;
- proposals for a 13-week maximum for most non-planning consents;
- a more effective mechanism for appellants to obtain costs where a statutory consultee has behaved unreasonably;
- a more flexible and light-touch approach to nationally significant infrastructure projects;
- a review of implementation of the habitats and birds directives to reduce costs and delays to development;
- a review of the appeals process to make it faster and more transparent, for implementation in summer 2012;
- consultation on a review of planning obligations made prior April 2010 for stalled development;
- proposals to allow agricultural buildings to be used for other uses.
The Planning Officers Society welcomed proposed changes to the infrastructure process and the ability to borrow against future community infrastructure levy receipts for infrastructure.
"We do, however, wait to see the detail of the proposals in the intended consultations before being able to comment further," said Society spokesman John Silvester.
