The sheer stupidity of imposing a deadline on yourself is now beginning to have a real impact beyond the talks with Barnier and the EU - and it is having little effect there anyway. The government it seems has belatedly realised that the work being done in Kent to develop sites either for lorry parks or customs facilities for imported goods, is also needed elsewhere. The Hull Daily Mail is reporting that the port in Hull is concerned they don't have the space or the time to get ready by December.
But that is not the only problem or even the main one. Rachel Reeves, the shadow cabinet secretary, visited the Mojo site at Ashford with the BBC also reporting that construction 'began earlier this month' without local people being consulted.
I don't think this is quite right. The site is being cleared and levelled which I would have thought the owner (HMG) is perfectly entitled to do. What they are not entitled to do is start construction. Planning laws are pretty strict in this country and I do not believe the government can simply start work on building stuff.
The site is, I understand identified in the local plan as being suitable for B8 Storage or distribution use. This class includes open air storage and so, to use it as a "giant lorry park" is probably quite acceptable within that use class. In which case objections are unlikely to prevent it going ahead.
For objections to be successful they must be based on 'material considerations' and they may be hard to come by. But the application can and should be challenged and at the very least it will throw the government's timetable into disarray.
For objections to be successful they must be based on 'material considerations' and they may be hard to come by. But the application can and should be challenged and at the very least it will throw the government's timetable into disarray.
Being identified in a local plan is just a first step, it is not planning permission - or indeed anything close to it.
For that you need an application to be determined, either by an officer or the planning committee. For a project of that scale it will almost certainly need a committee determination.
This requires a site plan, an application and probably a lot of other documents as well. A planning and transport statement, an environmental impact assessment and perhaps something on drainage and so on. This is the normal process. An office would make sure notices are placed in the local press and neighbours are consulted. He or she would prepare a report with all the pros and cons and finally recommendation one way or the other.
Only then would the committee consider it and come to a decision.
I imagine there are ways that a government can circumvent the process but I am pretty sure it will be strictly limited to some sort of national emergency. If we were under threat by a foreign power or a plague of locusts was almost upon us, no doubt there are legal routes to get a building constructed if it was desperately needed.
But the government's deadline is of its own making. There is no unexpected, uncontrollable or unforeseeable event upon us. Let's think about this. If a government department wanted to drive something through without all the tiresome planning formalities they could simply set a totally unrealistic deadline and use some emergency planning powers.
So, I would be pretty confident if I lived close to the Ashford site, that a letter threatening legal action through a judicial review would be immediately forthcoming if planning rules were bypassed, would scupper the entire Brexit timetable.
In essence this is not too different to the action that Jolyon Maughan is undertaking with regard to the PPE scandal. He is arguing that the government wasn't permitted to use emergency rules to place single bidder contracts because the need for PPE was not an unforeseen event.
In my opinion, Maugham has less chance with his case. The need for PPE may have been totally obvious (and I agree that it was) but the fact that the government failed to act in time does not lessen the emergency. In April it was clear masses of PPE was needed and I don't think the government had any choice but to place contracts without the time consuming competitive bidding process.
Maughan may be on firmer ground with the chaotic process itself and the cavalier use of huge amounts of public money - billions of pounds - but not on the fact that it was unforeseen.
But planning approval in a self compressed time frame is not an emergency.
One might also claim with justification that the need for the lorry parks and customs facilities is a consequence of the decision to leave the single market and the customs union. This was not explicit in the 2016 referendum and while it may have been clearer in the 2019 Tory manifesto, the need for all the additional infrastructure was not explained at all.
I would be 99% confident any judicial review would find in favour of the objectors, either in Kent or wherever the government are attempting to get infrastructure built.
Other ports like Holyhead, Plymouth, Liverpool or Stranraer will I assume also need additional facilities and will be faced with the same issue.
