Consenting electricity infrastructure in Scotland – reforms

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill contains reforms to procedures for consenting electricity infrastructure in Scotland. 

These are similar to the proposals in the consultation paper published in October 2024.

Background

The proposed changes apply to offshore and 50+MW on-shore projects consented by the Scottish Ministers under the Electricity Act 1989.

There are no changes to the local authority consenting procedures, which apply to electricity generation projects in Scotland below 50MW (in England, from 31 December 2025, local authority consenting procedures will apply to on-shore wind and solar projects up to 100MW).

Reforms

Many of the reforms involve giving Ministers the power to make regulations. The detailed position will only be known when draft regulations and accompanying guidance is published.

• Pre-application procedures – reforms include pre-application requirements, information that must be included in an application, an acceptance stage for the application to be accepted or declined, fees to be paid to Scottish Ministers on applications and for pre-application services, and requests for additional information.
• Time limits - for key elements of the process
• Reporter-led examination – removing the trigger for an automatic public inquiry process where a planning authority objects to the application; instead the Scottish Government reporter will decide what procedure is appropriate. This is what already happens in planning appeals; and in many Electricity Act applications the parties agree to use a mixture of procedures rather than presenting evidence on every issue at a public inquiry.
• Variations to consents – originally the proposal was for Ministers to have power to vary a consent if there had been a change of technological or environmental circumstances; that power is now limited by the requirement to obtain agreement from the consent-holder.
• Overhead lines - new statutory process to be introduced for varying consents. 
• Correcting errors in consent decisions - new power to be introduced.
• Legal challenges – at present the time limit for submitting a legal challenge to a Scottish onshore Electricity Act consent is 3 months, and 6 weeks for an offshore consent. The proposal is to have a 6 week time limit for all Electricity Act consent decisions.

Comments

The Government acknowledge some of these reforms “insert elements of best practice”. Formalising what already often happens in practice means the scope of the changes is not as wide as it might seem.

There is understandable enthusiasm for ensuring that applications are comprehensive at the submission stage, to avoid the need for additional information causing delays during the application process. However, that will be reliant on the quality of responses from statutory consultees at the pre-application stage.