This is a guest post from Alfie Robinson. Alfie is a historian and heritage consultant operating across England, with a keen interest in policy issues. You can find Alfie on LinkedIn or find his website here.
The much-anticipated Planning and Infrastructure Bill has just been published (11th March 2025). This Bill is perhaps the biggest step our ‘YIMBY Prime Minister’ has made so far to, as he promised in the campaign, ‘back the builders’. The legislation is billed as finally making it possible to build what we need, from homes to clean energy. But does the proposal live up to the promise?
The bill contains provisions that will speed up the planning process,and some that will make it simpler and less unpredictable for developers.
In short, these are all good things: sensible and important reforms to our planning system that will make a difference.
Here is the list of some of the highest-impact reforms:
Energy and Infrastructure
Simplifying consents
The Planning Act 2008 is designed to deal with major infrastructure projects, called ‘nationally significant infrastructure projects’. Unfortunately, the consent process can overlap with other processes to approve or reject developments. Now, the Secretary of State will be able to divert projects to just one type of approval system where there’s overlap (for example the planning system used for normal development), a sensible reform to stop needless overlap of two different oversight regimes.
Judicial review only where merited
Judicial review (JR) allows private citizens or organisations to challenge Government decisions. Whilst an important check on Government authority, bad-faith or mistaken JRs, where there isn’t a real case against a development consent, have been on the rise. This Bill will limit those suits, which have been responsible for significant delays and much of the ‘gold plating’ we see in British construction projects.
This will be in situations where the High Court finds an application for judicial review to be “totally without merit”, again stopping baseless legal challenges that waste time and money.
This provision is also echoed by others in the bill. Objections to transport projects (in the Transport and Works Act 1992) will lead to a public inquiry (a rigorous and expensive procedure) only if the objection is “serious enough to merit such treatment”. Currently, the bar to dismiss such a process is somewhat higher: the objection has to be actively “frivolous or trivial.”
Speedy decisions
Deadlines will be imposed on decision-making for railways and tramways amending the Transport and Works Act 1992. Currently, there is no statutory deadline for decisions on these projects, unlike other major projects. The actual deadlines will be defined at a later date by the Secretary of State.
Planning
Delegated powers
Fewer planning decisions will be made by political committees (local Councillors voting on applications), and more will instead be left to expert planning officers . This will reduce uncertainty and politicization of local decision making. Development either complies with the relevant local and national policies, or it doesn’t, so this policy would clarify things. The exact criteria for which applications will be decided by officers rather than committees are yet to be laid out. The bill mentions ‘regulations’ which will be made at a future point; the details of these will be important.
Nature restoration
A nature restoration levy could give a one-stop shop for managing the environmental impact of development. Current rules require expensive, slow and uncertain case-by-case environmental mitigations that try to deal with impacts on site—even where this makes little sense. Instead, a general levy could pool funds together for better conceived nature recovery projects rather than many tiny projects. This should not only enable more development but also improve outcomes for nature. For more on this read my previous piece on habitat regulations here.
Modernised land acquisition
Land acquisition and compulsory purchase will be modernised and streamlined. Compulsory purchase will no longer need the consent of the Secretary of State. Another provision will allow authorities to serve notices and documents via email or uploads, where they formerly had to be hard copies – surely a sensible, modernising step!
Planning reform could and should go even further. Important moves which aren’t in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill are:
- Supporting estate renewal.
Large numbers of UK housing estates are in desperate need of modernisation and densification, which should be supported by tenant ballots. Provisions to enable and support this process, which could deliver tens of thousands of homes, would be hugely beneficial to tenants whilst helping meet the Government’s housing targets. - Completing the secondary legislation to get street votes going.
We wouldn’t expect to see this in the Bill, but it’s an important thing that needs to be completed as a priority. This policy would get communities to come together and benefit from making their streets denser, but the secondary legislation still needs to be finalised; - Stronger reforms to compensation
When a party tries to strike down a planning system in the courts, through ‘judicial review’, if they lose their case, they’re supposed to pay compensation to the wronged party. Normally in English law this would be proportionate to the damage caused, but at the minute the compensation is capped at a tiny £5,000 for individuals or £10,000 for groups. Ironically, if the developer loses, the cap is much higher at £35,000. This double-standard needs correcting, for it currently encourages unreasonable and wasteful use of the courts. - Simplifying Biodiversity Gains
The ‘nature restoration levy’ is a promising step forward, but it isn’t yet clear whether it will replace Biodiversity Net Gain, a highly inefficient policy. The explanatory notes of the bill suggest that developers can use levies to deal with some environmental obligations, but it’s not clear which ones these will be. - Consultation Reforms
Before the Planning and Infrastructure Bill dropped, the government announced streamlining of ‘consultees’ in planning, targetting those that are not obviously relevant for planning. Consultees are parties that have to be asked for comment on planning applications. Unnecessary delays and costs caused by such consultations should be minimised, and the government should pursue this without delay. The current plan is to consult on the removal of consultees.
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One thing we need to see more detail on is planning application fees. Right now, when developers or homeowners submit a planning application, the fee for it to be processed is tightly controlled. The new bill would allow local authorities to set their own planning application fees, which might easily be open to abuse (local authorities could set fees punitively to discourage development). The bill does feature a process of “review” by the Secretary of State, but it is unclear how this would work and there is an added risk of tying up the Secretary’s valuable time in dealing with this.
The 160-page Planning and Infrastructure bill is a complicated document which touches on many important topics. It is a major step in the right direction, though there are plenty of details to be worked out. There are several ways the government could and should go even further, as we’ve outlined here.
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