​Firms welcome chancellor’s announcement on reforms to judicial review

Contractors have welcomed the chancellor’s announcement of reforms to the judicial review process for nationally significant infrastructure projects.

The proposed changes unveiled by Rachel Reeves last week would allow parliament to designate and approve the most important clean energy schemes as being of ‘critical national importance’.

This would reduce the exposure from judicial review on all but human rights grounds.

Of 167 development consent order decisions made since 2008, six were quashed after challenges.

For other nationally-significant schemes, such as transport and water projects, a fixed legal challenge window will be introduced, after which the planning consent could be updated to address legitimate concerns.

The law would also change to require courts to refuse permission for a judicial review based on any issues that were not brought up within this challenge window, or within the consenting period.

Lord Banner KC, who authored an independent review into legal challenges to major schemes, said he was “pleased” to see the government acting on his recommendations.

“It was however clear from the many people I spoke to in the course of that work and since that there is a strong case for going further if we are to meet the scale of our infrastructure challenge,” he said.

The Civil Engineering Contractors Association’s director of policy and public affairs, Ben Goodwin, welcomed the announcement and said that “while the right to legitimate legal challenge must be protected, it is in nobody’s interest for critical schemes to be delayed by repeated or unmeritorious challenges once they have already been through a robust consenting process”.

“Greater certainty around the judicial review process will help give contractors, clients and investors the confidence they need to plan, resource and deliver complex projects,” he added.