Tories will screp the IPC--- The Times---Gizz a job!!

Gizz a job........ I can do that!--I could work 4 and a half days!

Infrastructure Planning Commission will never work if Tories win


Sir Michael Pitt, the chairman, is paid £184,000 a year for a four-day week

Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor 29 Comments

Recommend? (3) Taxpayers are spending nearly £1 million a month on a quango that is unable to do the job for which it was created and will be scrapped if the Tories win the general election.



The Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), formed in October, has a chairman, Sir Michael Pitt, who is being paid £184,000 a year for a four-day working week. It has well-appointed new offices in Bristol and has hired dozens of staff, including seven commissioners on salaries equivalent to £100,000 per year.



But the organisation is unable to perform the task it was set, approving planning decisions for big energy and infrastructure projects such as nuclear power stations and high-voltage transmission lines, because the Government has yet to define the legal guidelines it should apply. Insiders say those criteria are unlikely to be approved before the general election and now the Tories have pledged to scrap the agency.



A spokesman for the commission agreed that there was no date for when it would start its formal work programme but the group rejected claims that it had only a light workload. A statement said it was currently “providing advice to a range of stakeholders” and added that its staff were preparing to start receiving applications and ensuring that the right processes were in place.



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The commission, whose budget is £9.3 million, has 40 employees and plans to recruit more in roles such as “Welsh-speaking case officers”.



The IPC was due to start considering applications originally on March 1 but that is now impossible because the guidelines will not be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny until at least May, after which an election is likely to herald the group’s break-up.



Bob Neill, the Tory planning spokesman, said that the IPC appeared to be “sitting on its hands”. He dismissed the organisation as the “most unaccountable and distant quango in existence” and said that a Conservative government would abolish it. “At the stroke of a pen, it will able to wipe whole communities off the map or blight their lives,” he said.



The Government had originally planned to set out the IPC’s final guidelines last November in “national policy statements” on energy, transport and other areas. The documents were published, but only in draft form because of a continuing public consultation that is essential if the Government is to avoid a legal challenge from groups opposed to the 18 projects earmarked for IPC scrutiny. They include new nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk as well as a 37-mile (60km) national grid overhead high voltage transmission line running from Bridgwater to Seabank near Avonmouth.



Jean McSorley, nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace, said: “It looks like these decisions will be put off until well after the general election, meaning more delays and uncertainty.”



The commission was created as part of a move to strip local authorities of the ability to block or delay projects considered to be of high national priority. An important part of the policy was to separate national decisions from individual planning concerns.



The Communities and Local Government Department said that until the national policy statements were fixed, the IPC would “make recommendations” to ministers.