One consent. Compulsory purchase powers, planning permission, listed building consent, highway works authority – all in a single document.
A Development Consent Order is how a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project actually gets permission to be built. It’s a single instrument that can carry an enormous amount of legal weight, and for anyone with land in a scheme’s path, knowing how the process works – and when to get involved – matters a great deal.
Here’s how a DCO is granted, what it can contain, and what it means for landowners along the way.
What is a DCO?
Introduced by the Planning Act 2008 in the wake of the protracted Heathrow Terminal 5 inquiry, the Development Consent Order was designed to replace a patchwork of separate applications – planning permission, compulsory purchase order, listed building consent, highway authorisations – with a single order covering everything a project needs. Rather than an applicant seeking each consent from a different body, one DCO application, examined by the Planning Inspectorate and decided by the Secretary of State, can grant the lot at once.
That consolidation is the whole point of the regime: fewer processes, one timetable, one decision.
What can a DCO actually contain?
Beyond planning permission for the development itself, a DCO can include powers relating to highway works, discharging water, surveying and investigating land, protecting buildings, felling trees and removing hedgerows, extinguishing or diverting public rights of way, and – significantly – land acquisition powers, including compulsory acquisition, the power to override easements, and the power to take temporary possession of land during construction.
In effect, a single DCO can do the legal work of several separate consents and orders that would otherwise each need their own application, their own consultation, and their own decision-maker.
How is a DCO granted? The six stages
The process runs through six defined stages, each with its own statutory timescale: pre-application, acceptance, pre-examination, examination, decision, and post-decision. It’s a front-loaded process – the applicant must fully scope the scheme and consult widely, including with statutory consultees, local authorities, landowners and tenants, and the public, before the application is even submitted for acceptance.
Once accepted, the Planning Inspectorate examines the application, typically over a period of months, before making a recommendation to the relevant Secretary of State, who takes the final decision. Government’s target for the whole process, from acceptance to decision, is around 12 to 15 months – a significant reduction from the multi-year timescales that preceded the 2008 Act.
How do you get a say?
Relevant local authorities automatically become Interested Parties. Anyone else – a landowner, a tenant, a member of the public – has to formally register as an Interested Party during a minimum 28-day registration window, which is what gives someone the right to submit written representations and request to speak during the examination. Missing that window is a real risk: registration isn’t a formality, and someone directly affected by a scheme who doesn’t register in time can lose their formal route to be heard.
What about compulsory acquisition specifically?
Sections 122 to 134 of the Planning Act 2008 set out both the ability to include compulsory acquisition powers within a DCO and the specific conditions that must be satisfied before those powers can be granted. A DCO’s compulsory acquisition function is legally separate from its planning function – the two are assessed against different tests, even though they’re delivered through the same order. Where the conditions are met, this route avoids the applicant needing to seek a separate, standalone compulsory purchase order.
How is this different from a standard CPO?
A conventional compulsory purchase order is a standalone process for one scheme, brought by one authority, under its own dedicated legislation. A DCO’s compulsory acquisition powers are one element within a much larger, bundled consent – so land might be compulsorily acquired as an incidental part of a decision that’s primarily about granting planning permission for the wider infrastructure scheme, rather than through a process that was ever solely about the acquisition itself.
Why does this matter for a transaction?
Because so much is decided within a single order, a DCO can affect a property in ways that wouldn’t show up through the usual routes: not just planning permission for a scheme nearby, but compulsory acquisition, rights of way extinguished, or temporary possession of land during construction, all authorised at once. As with NSIPs generally, this sits with the Planning Inspectorate’s national register rather than local authority planning records, so it’s a case where the standard local search won’t necessarily be the tool that reveals it. For any property near a proposed NSIP, checking the national infrastructure register – and understanding the Interested Party registration window if a client wants to have any say – is worth doing well before examination gets underway.
A DCO isn’t just a bigger planning permission. It’s a fundamentally different legal instrument, capable of granting compulsory acquisition powers, rights of way changes, and construction authorisations all in one document.
For anyone with land near a proposed NSIP, understanding what a DCO can do – and how narrow the window is to formally take part – matters well before a decision is ever made.
