Byers Gill Solar DCO and Critical National Priority infrastructure

We were delighted to receive the news yesterday that our third Development Consent Order (DCO) project has received its consent under the latest set of National Policy Statements (NPS - designated in January 2024), bringing the total number of DCOs that we have obtained for promoters to 23 since the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime came into force 15 years ago under the Planning Act 2008.   

The three latest DCOs, including the consent for Byers Gill Solar obtained yesterday, are the only DCOs to date to have been decided under those 2024 NPSs.  Solar projects were not included in the earlier National Policy Statements, so the two solar DCOs which have been granted over the last couple of months are the first solar projects to have been determined by the Secretary of State (SoS) under s.104 of the Act (which applies where a relevant NPS has been designated). 

One interesting feature across all three of these 2024 NPS DCO decisions is that the SoS has not felt it necessary to expressly engage the “Critical National Priority” (CNP) infrastructure provisions in the latest version of the overarching NPS EN-1 in their decision letters.  Those CNP provisions relate to how any residual impacts of a project will be weighed in the planning balance, and explain that “residual impacts are unlikely to outweigh the urgent need for this type of infrastructure” such that “in all but the most exceptional circumstances, it is unlikely that consent will be refused on the basis of these residual impacts.”

So what does this mean?  It means that the residual impacts associated with the DCOs which have been approved by the SoS over the last couple of months have not needed to expressly engage that CNP provision within the NPS as part of the SoS weighing matters in the planning balance, which overall must reflect positively on how those schemes have applied the mitigation hierarchy in the design of their projects.  

We look forward to more consents coming through the system, and continuing to work with our clients to navigate the DCO regime to help obtain the consents needed to deliver the UK's current energy and infrastructure aspirations.