Sure, the day to day work is done by civil servants, but only when Ministers have set the general policy direction, which they then sign off when completed as decisions are taken by Ministers.
But the bigger problem is that the Special Development Order has to be approved by the House of Commons and the House of Lords, by way of a piece of secondary legislation called a Statutory Instrument. It is not actually government which is approving this, it is parliament. For this to happen both Houses have to be sitting for a minimum of (I think) three weeks from the date that the government tables the legislation, at which point the secondary legislation is automatically approved by parliament. Given that we might face a general election in October, there might not be a period when parliament is sitting for a minimum of three weeks in order for the legislation to be approved.
If approval doesn’t happen before the election I don’t think the new government will take a different view about having this significant investment by Universal, but it does add the potential for a slightly different approach. Page Thompson said, I think in the public presentations, that Universal have already been in touch with the Labour Party, including meeting with Kier Starmer. The local Labour MP has also been hugely supportive. I don’t think a general election is a threat to Universal’s plans, but I think it could add a few months delay to the process.