§ Dr. CableTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (1) which criteria have been established by the Marine Consents and Environment Unit for time periods for the issue of licences; and what percentage of closures have been achieved within the time period in each of the last five years; [138554]
(2) how many licences have been issued by the Marine Consents and Environment Unit in each of the last five years; how many were refused; and what the average time taken was for (a) consultation and (b) approval of the licences. [138556]
§ Mr. MorleyThe Marine Consents and Environment Unit (MCEU) is a joint-departmental unit that was set up in April 2001 by my Department and the Department for Transport. Its role is to administer the marine works consents for which each Department has responsibility under the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 (FEPA), the Coast Protection Act 1949, the Telecommunications Act 1984 and certain other local legislation. The unit also processes licence applications under FEPA in waters for which the National Assembly for Wales is the licensing authority.
The unit's published guidance notes and website (http://www.mceu.gov.uk) make clear that a period of at least 10 weeks is normally required to process a straightforward application but that larger schemes (such as offshore windfarms and large port developments) and those in sensitive marine areas may take substantially longer. Much of this time is taken up by the consultation process with a range of outside bodies, which are normally given six weeks to respond.
The numbers of FEPA licences issued by the MCEU in each 12 month period since the unit was established is as follows.
720W
Year (1 April-31 March) Number of FEPA licences issued (including renewals and variations)
2001–02 (with effect from 1 April) 523 2002–03 522 2003–04 (to 13 November) 360 (a further 101 applications being processed) Since the MCEU was established 10 FEPA licences have been refused. However, in a number of cases, licences have only been issued where changes or restrictions to the original application have been agreed so as to mitigate adverse environmental impact or interference to other users of the sea.
The average time taken by MCEU to determine a FEPA licence (excluding licence variations) has been 12.5 weeks; 56 per cent. of applications have been processed within 10 weeks rising to 75 per cent. within 14 weeks. Where assessment of an application has taken longer, a licence will often have been processed so as to meet the requested start date for the consent.
Full equivalent data in respect of Coast Protection and Telecommunications Act consents are not readily available. However, 162 such consents have been issued by MCEU since July 2002 with an estimated further 150 consents granted by the unit up to end June 2002.
The unit has recently introduced the facility to make applications on-line and further improvements to streamline the processing of applications–such as electronic consultation–is under consideration.