This project will see Turley produce a Planning and Legal Delivery Strategy to support Wales and West Utilities’ plans for the delivery of a hydrogen infrastructure network in both Wales and the South West of England with UK wide applicable learning.
It will involve working in partnership to understand the key development considerations and provide the national, regional and local parameters for the required hydrogen infrastructure; a known gap in current knowledge, as acknowledged in WWU’s Regional Decarbonisation Pathways (RDP) report (September 2022).
This work is necessary to address the aforementioned gap in the current knowledge base regarding the appropriate planning and consenting regime for hydrogen infrastructure delivery. If we do not progress with this project, navigating the existing planning and consenting regime will be complex, onerous, risky and time consuming, which could undermine the delivery of vital infrastructure.
Benefits
Research project
Learnings
Outcomes
The PLDS identified the following potential routes for hydrogen pipeline infrastructure, based on an initial scope of works and understanding of scale of development:
- England - Development Consent Order, with larger projects potentially being able to obtain a direction from the Secretary of State under section 35 of the Planning Act 2008. Smaller projects that are not regarded as nationally significant would benefit from planning permission – either submitting applications to the relevant authorities under Town and Country Planning Act 1990, or by exercising permitted development rights.
- Wales – Planning application(s) under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 for the whole project; or a hybrid approach based on a combination of planning applications and reliance on PD rights for gas transporters under the GPDO 1995 in relation to the underground pipeline and associated works.
- England & Wales – This process is more complex but the most streamlined process would include relying on PD rights for gas transporters under the GPDO 2015 (in England) and GPDO (in Wales) for the relevant parts of the project, a single CPO to cover the English and Welsh sections of the pipeline under the Gas Act 1986 and submit planning applications to the relevant planning authorities to cover the remaining development.
The consenting routes outlined above are complex and difficult to navigate which reaffirms the importance of early specialist legal and planning engagement during the project design and engineering phases of new infrastructure proposals. The outcomes of the project are that WWU and relevant network providers have access to a summary of the available, potential consenting routes in different jurisdictions for hydrogen pipeline infrastructure. This has filled an existing knowledge gap, as well as providing advice on timelines, key considerations and next steps to inform future planning for network and net zero ambitions. Networks will be able to better plan their consenting approach and delivery strategy as a result of this work. It may be the case that this work is revisited in the future to account for developing legislation.
Lessons Learnt
The project identified a number of areas for further work//monitoring, including gaining a better understanding of how the application would work across multiple Local Planning Authorities and how lack of resourcing with external consultees such as the Welsh Government and Natural Resource Wales could impact the timescales for a project of this nature. Additionally, hydrogen pipelines are not currently covered by the emerging Infrastructure Wales Bill, and this should be monitored closely moving forward as it could result in a change to the process of delivering a hydrogen pipeline, if amended. The learnings could be exploited to further engage directly in updates to legislation and policy as a result of the findings and next steps proposed.
