Imagine you are the banker at the start of a Monopoly game. You intend to distribute the money fairly, one note each. But before you begin, one player produces a card – allowed under new rules – that gives them half the money in advance. You continue to behave in an unbiased way – one note at a time – but the result is already tilted. This is a structural rather than personal bias – one that is built into the rules.
Section 35 works the same way in the Hope Moor planning process. It allows the developer to bypass the normal parish and county council stages and present the proposal directly to the Secretary of State. Although from there on the procedures remain neutral, the starting conditions are not. This article outlines the biases that creates – for example, showing how the process already favours the development over scrutiny – and what can be done to get some balance back into the decision making.
What Section 35 Does
Section 35 enables a developer to request that a project be treated as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP). If granted, the application leaves the local planning system and enters the nationally administered NSIP regime. This has three main effects.
First, parish and county councils lose their formative role. Under normal planning, they gather views in an even-handed way, test claims, hold meetings, and ensure competing interests – including local ones – are represented. Under Section 35, this balancing stage disappears. Officers have to remain neutral, but they operate within a framework that is tilted in one direction and no longer allows them to correct for this early imbalance. It is important to stress that the parish and county councils have not chosen to step back; the Section 35 process removes the decision from their hands and places it directly within the national framework.
Second, the developer gains a direct procedural relationship with the Secretary of State. They define the needs, the scope of the proposal, and the documents they present. The community’s opportunity to challenge or shape this framing is far more limited than under the standard planning route. In fact, there is only one opportunity for the public that has legal weight – very early on in the first consultation. After this statutory consultation, most of the proposal becomes technically fixed as the developer finalises its application, which means later stages allow very little room for meaningful change.
Third, the pace increases and, once the formal application is submitted, there is much less room for public influence. Although developers may have spent years preparing, and have vast resources to call on, communities are given only weeks to discover and absorb complex documentation that, in a standard application, would emerge gradually over much longer periods. In some cases, the process can move forward before some members of the community are fully aware of what is happening or given time to think through the various consequences.
What Biases Does This Create?
The biases that Section 35 creates are structural, not personal – in terms of the analogy, the bias is in the new rules of the game, not in the attitude of the banker. There are five main areas.
1. Power imbalance
The normal planning system run by parish and county councils ensures that decisions are made taking account of both sides and in the context of a balance of power between the developers and the communities affected. In cases where they make a decision that conflicts with national priorities, the Secretary of State can ‘call it in’ and make a decision that takes account of the competing views expressed in the council deliberations. However, when the developer applies for a Section 35 (new legislation in 2008), the dialogue goes straight to a national discussion in which the developer takes the lead in shaping the dialogue with central government. A structural bias does not predetermine the outcome, but it shifts the probabilities and shapes the conditions under which the decision is made.
2. Preparation and resources
Developers often enter the NSIP process with years of preparation, specialist teams, and experience in presenting proposals in the most positive and cohesive way. They also have the financial capacity to offer mitigation or compensation packages, which have become a routine part of major infrastructure proposals. Communities, by contrast, must act on their own initiative to identify relevant material, often under severe time pressure and without equivalent resources. The combination of extensive developer preparation, early framing, and financial capacity creates a structural imbalance in which the developer’s position is more immediately visible and comprehensible than the community’s. It is comparable to a professional Monopoly player competing against someone encountering the rules for the first time and trying to learn them as the game progresses.
3. Framing advantage
The developer’s documents form the first lens through which the government see the proposal. This tends to set the agenda for how the decision will be considered – and the choice of agenda influences which way the government will go. Just as the cropping of an image determines what the viewer notices, the initial framing of a proposal determines which impacts are foregrounded and which are pushed out of view. To the extent that communities are able to engage in the process, they have to unpick assumptions underlying the developer’s agenda and find ways to promote the balancing concerns on the other side of the argument.
4. Professional barriers
NSIP participation often requires technical, legal, and environmental expertise. Developers have the budget for this; residents do not. The level of professionalisation demanded by the NSIP can be a barrier to equal participation, which means only one side of the argument is given due consideration.
5. Underlying presumptions
Section 35 also shifts the practical burden of persuasion. Under the normal planning route, a proposal is examined by local authorities on its merits, with the developer expected to justify the need, location, and impacts. Under Section 35, the dialogue tends to begin with the assumption that, because the national energy infrastructure is needed, the development will proceed unless exceptionally strong reasons are raised to rebalance the picture (around 95% of submitted NSIP applications are approved). This bias is not a matter of individual or even corporate attitudes, but a structural feature of the NSIP framework that gives priority to one side of the argument and minimises the other.
How Can These Biases Be Compensated?
Analytical psychology recognises the difference between overt and structural bias (one usually overt or conscious, the other usually tacit or unconscious). It suggests various ways of compensation – e.g. when one perspective dominates, balance is restored by focusing on the side that has been marginalised. Applied in the context of Hope Moor, compensation means bringing to the fore and stressing aspects or consequences that the developers have not. Practical steps include:
Reintroducing the local balancing function
If communities can get organised in time, they can coordinate evidence gathering and structured registers of objections to replace the balancing role normally undertaken by local councils (who are disempowered by the Section 35). If these are documented in parish council meetings and through properly registered opposition groups, the Secretary of State becomes obligated to look at them.
Counter-framing with clarity
A clear, coherent alternative framing – e.g. in websites, leaflets, social media, petitions, etc. – can help to widen the decision-maker’s perspective by putting public and political pressure on the Secretary of State to listen to the marginalised, quieter, and less obvious voices so they are given due weight. Any well-documented community evidence submitted early becomes part of the formal planning record and must be reviewed alongside the developer’s material during the decision-making process.
Accelerating local awareness
Time is of the essence because the NSIP timeline front-loads the entire process. Developers dominate the long pre-application phase, often working for years before the community becomes aware of the proposal. By contrast, the public’s meaningful participation is compressed into a single statutory consultation. Also, whereas normal planning processes allow communities to become aware of the plans and issues slowly, the formal consultation window under a Section 35 happens soon after the project becomes public knowledge. This front-loading can only be balanced by rapid communication within the community to help residents become aware of and understand the proposals. Understanding the structural bias up front will help the community engage constructively when the consultation quickly intensifies and then just as quickly is over.
Borrowing professionalisation
There may be charities, pro bono experts, and other forms of support that can narrow the technical gap without placing impossible burdens on residents. Sharing resources and expertise between communities can also help to meet the many urgent challenges. Ultimately, the decision may hinge on a single professional view or process that is brought to the attention of the Secretary of State (by the developer or by those opposing it).
Broadening the scope of impacts
In the case of Hope Moor, it is likely the developer will present the needs as being for national energy infrastructure whilst arguing that other issues – such as ecology, environment, landscape, etc. – can be mitigated. The compensatory standpoint needs to focus on those aspects of ecology, environment, landscape, etc. that cannot be mitigated. This can expand the frame and counteract the narrow focus introduced by Section 35.
Conclusion
The structure created by Section 35 shifts the balance so that national energy considerations tend to dominate — unless environmental and local concerns are clearly and strongly presented by the community and environmental organisations.
However, although any compensatory activities may stress the latter rather than the former, the aim is not to obstruct developments that support our energy needs. Rather, it is to develop what analytical psychology calls a transcendent function. That is, by holding competing needs in a balanced view — national energy security and environmental protection — we seek a solution that integrates both.
For example, the Secretary of State might consider options such as smaller turbines in less sensitive locations, or exploring financial frameworks that make offshore wind more viable, or other ideas that reconcile competing needs. The point is that integrative solutions tend to emerge only when both sides of the argument are held in view.
If the balanced view that has been lost through Section 35 can be restored through compensatory arguments, the Secretary of State will be able to see the project in the wider context of its benefits, its costs, and the genuine alternatives. And that is the ground on which fair and creative decisions are made.