I agree with all of this, except for one point. I agree that there’s not a huge amount of political capital for the government of the day to earn by approving Universal’s plans. First, this seems to have cross-party support, with the local Labour MP and the party more widely giving an equally warm welcome to the plans. In fact, the first contact Universl had with the local authority was with the previous Labour mayor of Bedford. Second, I can’t see this as being a vote-changer, especially in time for the forthcoming general election. For every person near Bedford who is very happy to see this inward investment, there might be five people in other parts of the country who are angry that the government’s Department for Levelling-Up are once again ignoring their locality.
The one point I disagree on is that I think there is evidence that the planning process for this is different from other large scale developments. As far as I can tell the decision to consider a Special Development Order for Universl’s plans is without precedent. They seem to be bypassing the procedure for a standard planning application to the local authority. They seem to be bypassing the established procedures for a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. How many other commercial projects of this scale has government said they will consider passing new legislation to get approved? I couldn’t find any examples. We know from Bedford’s mayor that within a few days of first being contacted by Universal the government had set up a task force to take forward the plans. That seems remarkably quick to me, more evidence that this is different.