IN THE midst of the wettest drought on record, when the South East is aching for a new reservoir, I asked a planning inspector what advice he would give to would-be project promoters. “That question is just a load of bananas,” he replied coolly. Meaning? “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.”

Whether that rule of thumb can safely steer us through the big infrastructure decisions of the next decade is doubtful. Even projects in wildernesses will face objections on those very grounds. Yet the environmental clock is ticking. As one lawyer said last week: “If your planning process is so thorough that it produces the perfect solution to the question you first asked, then it will be the wrong answer to the question you now face.”

The past 20 years have been inglorious ones for planning and public inquiries. “We’ve had a terribly cluttered process,” Patrick Robinson, of Herbert Smith, says. “It has been based on a one-size fits all approach whether that is for a dormer window or a power station.”

So looking ahead to proposals for new reservoirs, airport runways, desalination plants and even nuclear power stations, is the system any better able to resolve the perennial debate between “need” and “effect”?

The experience over the Terminal 5 development at Heathrow was instructive. As one lawyer in a leading planning practice says: “It took the planners twice as long to agree on what to do about Terminal 5 as it has taken to build it — and that must be wrong.” The terminal proved to be a milestone in planning history. The public inquiry lasted from May 1994 to March 1999 and prompted such angst in the planning community that important changes followed. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act of 2004 ushered in a new era and as Keith Thorpe, inquiry secretary to T5, wrote: “The Terminal 5 inquiry may well prove to have been a turning point in the way major infrastructure projects of national importance are handled in this country.”

As Thorpe highlighted, the topics that took up almost half the inquiry’s time were largely involved with clarifying issues of government policy (for example, on national airports and highways policy). “The availability of more up-to-date national policy frameworks in these areas before the inquiry started would have possibly saved time on explaining and debating such matters in the inquiry itself,” Thorpe said.

In other words, rather than starting with an (almost) blank sheet of paper there is much to be gained by government establishing in advance what its broad position is in relation to these matters of “national importance”. As Robinson observes: “Some of the issues addressed by public inquiries are just too big — they need to be taken back by Parliament.”

Progress in that direction has been made, which is why, of course, the inquiry into whether or not nuclear power should have a place in the future energy “mix” is so critical. Get that point sorted out in advance at national level and lots of time will be saved once the specific project inquiries begin.

Other important practical changes have also been introduced — such as having teams of inspectors working in parallel on separate aspects of a proposal. Meanwhile, the inspectors have been encouraged to take a more hands-on role. “In the past some inspectors were more interested in getting it ‘safe’ than in getting it ‘right’,” Robinson says. “Now they are expected to take a more active role in case-managing the process.”

So greater control, target timetables and a clear input about government policy from the inspectors can all help to make public inquiries more efficient. Added to that, says Jason Towell, of Cripps Harries Hall, the simple expedient of having more planning officers could also help to save a lot of time.

But while the rules can be changed and procedures smartened up, the political culture cannot be shifted so easily. While local politicians (such as Ken Livingstone fighting the proposed Thames Water desalination plant until the last drop of his bath water) continue to see electoral mileage in opposing any big development, it is probably futile to look for any quick-fix solution. Moreover, it would be a mistake to assume that everything on the Continent is better than in the UK. In fact, experience from Germany and the Netherlands over new airports suggested that their planning processes can be just as long-winded. Meanwhile, new developments from the EU — including examination of the environmental impact and the right of people to be consulted — have probably increased the number of hurdles that must be vaulted.

Tim Pugh, of Berwin Leighton Paisner, says: “The UK has a history of long inquiries but, in a democratic society, trying to ramrod difficult decisions is counter-productive. Inquiries and consultations are essential to public acceptance. Further system changes will not help. The answer lies in decisive government, eradicating avoidable delay and imaginative use of collaborative procedures.” Politicians of all hues, please take note.

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