England’s Ministers have amended a clause in its Growth and Infrastructure Bill following concern that moves to relax the development control regime for telecommunications infrastructure in National Parks and areas of outstanding beauty (AONBs) would damage protected landscapes.
The Government is keen to roll-out superfast broadband as fast as possible and had proposed to legislate to remove the existing prior approval regime for the necessary infrastructure for a five-year period in all areas expect where Sites of Special Scientific Interest were involved.
During the Bill’s consideration in the Lords Communities Minister Baroness Hanham said the rewording of the clause would ensure ‘that the duty that already exists under Section 109 of the Communications Act 2003 for the secretary of state to have regard for the environment and beauty of the countryside will be deemed to meet the ‘have regard’ duties set out in protected areas legislation, when the secretary of state comes to make regulations under Section 109’.
She said: ‘I emphasise that the purpose of our reforms is to ensure that fixed broadband deployment is not held back in the small minority of cases where local planning authorities and communications providers are not able to agree the best siting.’
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