Introduction
On 11 March 2025, the Government introduced to Parliament the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (the Bill)
The full Bill can be accessed at the following link: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3946
The Bill introduces measures aimed at speeding up planning decisions to boost housebuilding and remove unnecessary blockers and challenges to the delivery of vital developments
In this blog post, we discuss the key planning measures under the Bill
Key planning measures under the Bill
There are the following key planning measures under the Bill:
- Planning Committees – Planning decisions by Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) will be streamlined through the introduction of a national scheme of delegation that will (1) set out which types of planning applications should be determined by officers and which should go to committee, (2) have controls over the size of planning committees, and (3) introduce mandatory training for planning committee members
- Planning Fees – LPAs will be empowered to set their own planning fees to allow them to cover their costs
- Nature Restoration Fund – A Nature Restoration Fund will be established to ensure builders can meet their environmental obligations faster and at a greater scale by pooling contributions to fund larger environmental interventions
- Compulsory Purchase Reform – The compulsory purchase process will be reformed to ensure compensation paid to landowners is not excessive and the process of using directions to remove ‘hope value’ (i.e. the value attributed to the prospect of planning permission being granted for alternative development) where justified in the public interest is sped-up. Inspectors, councils or mayors where there are no objections, will also take decisions instead of the Secretary of State
- Development Corporations – Development Corporations will be strengthened to make it easier to deliver large-scale development such as the Government’s new towns and to build 1.5 million homes alongside the required infrastructure
- Strategic Planning – The Bill will introduce a system of ‘strategic planning’ across England known as spatial development strategies which will help to boost growth by looking across multiple LPAs for the most sustainable areas to build and ensuring there is a clear join-up between development needs and infrastructure requirements. These strategies will be produced by mayors, or by councils in some cases
- National Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) – The Bill will ensure a faster NSIP regime that delivers infrastructure projects faster by streamlining the consultation requirements for projects and ensuring that the national policies against which infrastructure applications are assessed are updated at least every five years. The Government will further overhaul the process by which its decisions on major infrastructure projects can be challenged, including providing that meritless cases will only have one (rather than three) attempts at legal challenge
Our Comments
Many of the planning measures contained in the Bill have been proposed by the Government in previous consultation documents and press releases so are of no surprise. Clearly, the Government’s primary focus with these measures is to streamline the planning system and speed up planning decisions to bring forward more infrastucture development and achieve its target of 1.5 million new homes. In practice, this may be difficult to achieve but we welcome any measures the Government puts forward which will encourage more building and an increase in new homes
Note: all comments and views expressed in this blog are merely opinions and provided for information purposes only and do not constitute legal advice which can be relied upon. Should you require legal advice on a matter then please contact us
