> "Building also requires hefty paperwork, which slows projects. As Britain Remade found, reopening a 3.3-mile train line to Portishead from Bristol took 79,187 pages of planning documents. Printed out, that’s 14.6 miles of paperwork — 4.5 times the length of the actual railway. The process has taken 16 years so far. (Construction should start soon.)"
The distance between those 2 points is approximately 11 miles.
Given that I'd hazard a guess that the 3.3 miles relate to the portion entering Bristol and likely require many 100's of title deeds be updated.
Having worked on land registry software it's unclear how paperwork relating to people's property could be avoided. Even just taking the land from them would still require the deeds etc updated.
Updating the deeds (i.e. the process of effecting a sale) is trivial, though if you want to count these are indeed pages of paperwork for each property. It's all that comes before that takes time: consultation on route, land purchases, compulsory purchase orders, appeals, etc.
That being said, there must be more than that because it seems to me that every infrastructure project (even without purchasing land) takes ages and costs accumulate fortune for what it is. An example is the work on existing lines and stations as part of the Elizabeth line work outside London.
This seems specific as, overall, I would say that red tape for individuals and businesses is less than in, say, France or Germany.
Sorry, possibly not being clear, I was referring to the likely case of land having to be purchased and that making it necessary to split and remap the plot etc. That's certainly not trivial. When you do it to 100's of properties that's a lot of paperwork.
Choice quote:
> "Building also requires hefty paperwork, which slows projects. As Britain Remade found, reopening a 3.3-mile train line to Portishead from Bristol took 79,187 pages of planning documents. Printed out, that’s 14.6 miles of paperwork — 4.5 times the length of the actual railway. The process has taken 16 years so far. (Construction should start soon.)"
The distance between those 2 points is approximately 11 miles.
Given that I'd hazard a guess that the 3.3 miles relate to the portion entering Bristol and likely require many 100's of title deeds be updated.
Having worked on land registry software it's unclear how paperwork relating to people's property could be avoided. Even just taking the land from them would still require the deeds etc updated.
Updating the deeds (i.e. the process of effecting a sale) is trivial, though if you want to count these are indeed pages of paperwork for each property. It's all that comes before that takes time: consultation on route, land purchases, compulsory purchase orders, appeals, etc.
That being said, there must be more than that because it seems to me that every infrastructure project (even without purchasing land) takes ages and costs accumulate fortune for what it is. An example is the work on existing lines and stations as part of the Elizabeth line work outside London.
This seems specific as, overall, I would say that red tape for individuals and businesses is less than in, say, France or Germany.
Sorry, possibly not being clear, I was referring to the likely case of land having to be purchased and that making it necessary to split and remap the plot etc. That's certainly not trivial. When you do it to 100's of properties that's a lot of paperwork.
https://archive.ph/25DPx