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.I think there is a risk that we exist in a bubble where something like Universal GB is incredibly exciting for us, and the people of Bedford, but the average voter is 1) not going to know about this and 2) even if they do know about this, they're not going to be basing their electoral decisions on this. This may exercise voters in the local area, but do you really think Jack from Bradford is going to vote on this issue over, say, the NHS waiting lists or a lack of teachers in schools?
To answer your second point, I fail to see how a planning application of this scale can be 1) developed be Uni in consultation with statutory partners 2) delivered to relevant Gov departments 3) progressed through statutory public consultations and 4) approved....all before the probable election in Autumn.
Can I remind people that the UK Gov has currently spent £300 million on a planning application...for a bridge. If you were to read all 360,000 pages of its various application documents it would take you over a year of constant reading 24/7 (nope I'm not joking). We just aren't quick at planning in this country and there is no reason to believe this would be different - although I'd love to be wrong.
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.