Government and Infrastructure. Second half..

I am presently in the second half of my seat in G&I (that’s “Government and Infrastructure” to the initiate).  This is one of BDB’s larger departments and the work is appropriately engaging and “big ticket”.

This department advises private developers, government departments, multinational utilities, and sometimes the UK’s devolved governments (like the Welsh Assembly) on infrastructure consenting, as well as general legal advice with a public law flavour.  EU law also comes into a lot of it, particularly with environmental decision making and procurement exercises, both areas with a significant European dimension. 

The infrastructure aspects of the work do not involve what we learn in law school as “planning” as the driving factor.  Most of the projects here would be too large and complex for the regular “Town and Country” planning system anyway.  The order of the day is Transport and Works Orders, private Acts of Parliament (for which the BDB office’s close proximity to Parliament Square can be useful) and the new Development Consent Orders created by the Planning Act 2008.  All these are special types of legislation designed to deal in one fell swoop with issues that would be too numerous and time-consuming to apply for discretely with regular planning consents.

This sort of thing may sound obscure and UK-centric, but if you want to build a new container port like London Gateway - a crucial hub for the whole of Europe, not just this country, to trade with the emerging economies of Asia - you need to know how to do it with minimum fuss.  This is crucial stuff for inward investment into UK facilities in freight, energy, transport and so forth.

Stay tuned for later next month when I’ll tell you about Victorian (and pre-Victorian) “creatures of statute”.  P