Infrastructure planning review launched as lead named | Construction News

Charles Banner KC will lead a major review into speeding up infrastructure projects, the government has announced.

Banner, who is also a peer in the House of Lords, will examine whether nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) are “unduly held up by inappropriate legal challenges”, and how that could be “effectively resolved”.

Many of the UK’s most high-profile infrastructure projects have faced delays in the courts, including Silvertown Tunnel and a road tunnel set to be built under Stonehenge.

The review will look at how the government could minimise delays “while guaranteeing the constitutional right to access of justice and meeting the UK’s international obligations”.

Banner will work with barrister Nick Grant on the review, which was first announced in last year’s autumn statement. The review is set to take around three months.

Housing minister Lee Rowley said: “It is vitally important that we use every tool at our disposal to slash unnecessary planning delays and accelerate building where it is needed across the country.”

He said the review would focus on speeding up the delivery of projects “in the face of costly legal challenges”.

Banner chaired the UK nature-conservation advisory body the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, and was an independent member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ global standards and regulation board.

He also taught at the University of Oxford and is a committee member of the Planning and Environmental Bar Association.