On 28 February, RICS endorsed a conference on the New Regime for Major Infrastructure Projects.

There was an impressive line-up of speakers including Bernadette Kelly, Executive Director of Planning at CLG, who gave an overview of the planning reforms and how the new regime would work in practice.

Delegates were able to question her on issues such as funding, how to achieve a political consensus and the extent to which the call in powers were going to be replaced.

The event presented a good opportunity to explore how national policy statements could be made to interact with one another in the absence of a national spatial strategy; how to achieve early engagement with the public; what would be the most appropriate way for Parliament to examine the content of national policy statements; and how the knowledge gap which exists in elected decision makers could be overcome.

For more information, please email Damian Cleghorn at dcleghorn@rics.org