Earlier this month, our Director Maggie was delighted to contribute to a Women in Property webinar providing an insight into the UK space sector. Her presentation focussed on some of the key challenges in securing planning consent for a vertical launch facility at Space Hub Sutherland (SHS), and how we addressed those. In particular, she highlighted the importance of having a strong, multi-disciplinary team, and of that team taking a collaborative and holistic approach to preparing the planning application for the spaceport, with us applying our planning expertise to ensure that we satisfied all relevant planning requirements.
Although the SHS infrastructure (comprising a launch pad, antenna park, two buildings and an access track) would not in itself appear particularly complicated, the novel nature of the proposed use and the site’s context did present some unique planning challenges. For example:
- the fact that SHS is the first of its kind in the UK (and indeed in Europe) meant there were no precedent decisions to guide the application of planning and environmental regulations and policies, given that spaceport development clearly wasn’t something that had been envisaged when they were prepared;
- when we were preparing the planning application, the Space Industry Act regulations hadn’t yet been drafted, meaning that we had to anticipate potential interfaces between planning and the spaceport licencing regimes, including in terms of how environmental impacts would be assessed;
- that the application site incorporates land covered by a number of international and European natural heritage designations and, although there’s no built development proposed on the designated sites themselves, the unusual nature of the development and its proximity to those sites presented considerable challenges in demonstrating potential environmental impacts were appropriately addressed and mitigated;
- although not a visitor attraction, SHS is anticipated to attract a significant number of visitors, particularly for the initial launches, without it not having been possible to predict potential visitor numbers, or likely facilities (such as parking and viewing areas) required to accommodate them, when we were preparing the planning application.
As a result of these challenges, NatureScot submitted a holding objection to the application because of the potential impacts of visitor management, including protestors, on the designated sites, both within the application site and beyond, and it was vital we addressed that objection to secure a recommendation of approval from The Council’s planners.
So how did we overcome these challenges?
Crucial to doing that was having an engaged and informed client in Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), who are knowledgeable about the space sector and, importantly, are committed to ensuring that SHS delivers real and lasting economic and social benefits, whilst also not just minimising environmental impacts but positively enhancing the environment. And to achieve that, HIE knew that they had both to employ the right people to help develop and deliver the project, and to collaborate with the right people throughout the process. So, from the first formal pre-application enquiry, three years before we submitted the planning application, HIE engaged a multi-disciplinary team of specialists, many of whom would not normally be involved in a planning application, but all of whom played an important role in ensuring that the application documentation was thorough and robust.
Throughout the project, we’ve also made sure that The Council, the local community, and statutory consultees (notably SEPA and NatureScot) were aware of, and consulted on, every relevant aspect of the project as it developed, which meant that we knew of any concerns they had and were able to work with them to address many of those before the application was submitted.
Ultimately, this informed, multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach meant that, while we were often in unchartered territory in planning terms, we could draw on our collective experience from other projects and apply that to the SHS application. For example, with members of the project team actively participating in discussions around the Space Industry Act regulations, we were able to make some informed assumptions about the potential interaction of those with existing planning and environmental regulations, while our experience of working within that regulatory and policy context enabled us to extrapolate key principles from that and apply them to a representative launch event, demonstrating how all relevant requirements would be satisfied in doing so.
Addressing the issue of visitor management, and thereby resolving the objection from NatureScot, is just one example of how this approach worked in practice. We made sure that we properly understood NatureScot’s concerns, and what was required to give them comfort that visitor management would be appropriately addressed. And, whilst it was anticipated that the Space Industry Act regulations would safeguard the environment from operational impacts, we also took the innovative approach of developing a visitor management strategy to illustrate how scenarios, such as groups of protestors breaching the launch exclusion zone of the spaceport, would be managed such that there would be no impact on the integrity of the nature conservation designations. Most notably, this work was informed by a security consultant (an example of a discipline not normally central to a planning application), with our role being to ensure they understood the planning policy requirements to be addressed, and to present their specialist security processes in planning terms to demonstrate how this was done.
As a result of this approach, HIE has the first planning consent for a vertical launch facility in the UK, and is now actively working towards delivering a carbon neutral spaceport, something we are very proud to be a part of.
Thanks for reading!
Pippa and Maggie
