Five key changes set out in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill

The government is reducing opportunities for legal challenge

Under the current system, opponents to major infrastructure projects can make three legal challenges – which can introduce major costs and delays. The bill would reduce the number of opportunities for legal challenges to two for most challenges and only one for those judged ‘totally without merit’. This follows the recommendations of a review initiated under the previous government.

Two changes aim to speed up planning decisions

Planning authorities are under-resourced, struggling with recruitment and retention, and lack the capacity and capability to process their caseload within statutory timelines. To achieve its goals, the government needs a lot more planning decisions to get through the system much more quickly.

The bill makes two key changes to achieve this. First, it allows the secretary of state to grant local planning authorities powers to raise their own planning fees (up to a maximum of recovering all their costs for a planning application), with these funds ringfenced for investing in the local planning service. Second, it lays the groundwork for the government to introduce regulations setting out which planning decisions should be delegated to planning officers (to make in accordance with the local plan), rather than going to local planning committees. This is a key change which should speed up how quickly and predictably planning decisions are made: a problem for successive governments in the past. But it is likely to be controversial as it will reduce the opportunity for local councillors to make some planning decisions on a case-by-case basis.

The bill will make planning more strategic 

Since the coalition government abolished regional spatial strategies and mandatory targets in 2010, planning has been done by lower-tier authorities and has been largely uncoordinated across wider local areas, meaning new housing is poorly distributed and does not align with local infrastructure plans. The bill addresses this by placing a duty on combined authorities, combined county authorities, upper-tier county councils and unitary authorities – or designated groups of these authorities – to prepare a strategic plan (Spatial Development Strategy) for their area. By implementing our recommendation to move to simple majority support, the government’s reforms will also ensure that one local authority can no longer unhinge a strategic plan that is largely supported, as has happened under current processes requiring unanimous agreement.  

Done well, strategic planning could be a key tool for aligning housing, growth and infrastructure plans to maximise their benefits, and minimise their costs, for regions as a whole. It is also a major opportunity for mayors to champion and lead regional growth. But, at a time when local government is under pressure, it will be key that authorities have the resource they need to design and implement these plans. 

The bill paves the way for updated, more powerful development corporations

The bill introduces significant updates to the legislation for development corporations – the publicly owned delivery vehicles that created the new towns of the 1940s, Canary Wharf in the 1980s and the regeneration of Stratford alongside the Olympics. 

As well as reducing inconsistencies between development corporation models and adding new objectives on sustainable development, the bill also enables new town development corporations to be used for urban extensions, not just as entirely new settlements, widening the options for the government’s upcoming wave of New Towns. 

Importantly, the bill expands the remit of mayoral development corporations to clarify that they can be used by mayors to develop greenfield land, in line with recommendations in our recent report on devolution and urban regeneration. This reform should empower mayors across England to make better use of the development levers they hold.

The bill aims to reduce environmental red tape and compliance costs 

Complying with environmental regulation – both completing the mass of paperwork and then coming up with necessary mitigations – has been repeatedly identified by ministers as a major barrier to building in the UK. The bill proposes that a delivery body (like Natural England) instead produces higher-level ‘Environmental Delivery Plans’ (EDPs), determining standardised levels of environmental mitigation needed for certain types and scales of development in a specific area. Where an EDP exists, developers will have the option to pay into a new ‘Nature Restoration Fund’, which the delivery body will use to fund appropriate mitigations, including by pooling contributions from multiple developers. 

This could reduce duplication, costs and uncertainty, ensuring that environmental protections are in place while streamlining the process for developers. But success will depend on how comprehensive, clear and widely usable the EDPs are, replacing existing assessments and making it straightforward for developers and Natural England alike to determine environmental obligations on new sites. If this process goes wrong, it could increase costs and delays in the system.

The government has identified planning reform as the big lever it can pull to improve the UK’s lacklustre growth and building performance. Key factors like interest rates, market incentives, and the fiscal room to invest in social housing are all outside the scope of what this legislation can influence, but this bill – as drafted – has the potential to address some of the fundamental weaknesses in the current system. Unlike its predecessors, the government should resist pressure to back track.