Planning and Infrastructure Bill Unveiled

A seismic overhaul of the planning system is well underway, led by a new Government with an ambition to facilitate the delivery of 1.5 million homes within this parliament, achieve greater energy security and resilience, fulfil the commitments made in the ‘Clean Power 2030 Action Plan (enroute to the carbon net zero by 2050 target), deploy critical infrastructure; and drive significant economic growth.

Tuesday (11 March 2025) saw the introduction of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to Parliament by the Secretary of State, Angela Rayner. The Bill seeks to enshrine planning reforms in statute, associated with wider reforms to change the National Planning Policy Framework (December 2024), the English Devolution White Paper, Written Ministerial Statements, as well as the Secretary of State’s interventions in calling in major decisions for housing, infrastructure and data centres since Summer 2024.

The Bill includes a suite of changes including:

• Planning functions of local authorities planning committees

• Energy and infrastructure

• Establishing a nature restoration fund

• Strategic planning

• Compulsory Purchase Reform

• Development corporations.

Whilst we await further detail as the Bill moves through the parliamentary process and into secondary legislation, JLL have reviewed and assessed how these interventions could impact mainstream planning processes, functions, decision taking, and local plan making. 

The Bill reshapes the decision-making process by local planning authorities (LPAs) and the role and responsibilities of planning committees and officers.

Central to this is delegating more power to planning officers to determine planning applications, whilst allowing planning committees to focus their attention on major strategic planning applications. A National Scheme of Delegation will set the parameters for which types and scale of development would be covered, alongside defining limitations to the size of planning committees.

Further detail will be announced in due course regarding the National Scheme of Delegation. This detail will provide enhanced certainty and transparency, whilst ensuring consistency across all Local Authorities.

A welcome element of the Bill is the mandatory training for planning committee members which will strive to upskill members, resulting an improved qualitative decision-making process. 

In conjunction with these changes, a Written Ministerial Statement given on Monday 10 March regarding the role of statutory consultees, proposes changes to redefine their scope and stipulate that local planning authorities engage with statutory consultees where necessary to do so, in addition to ensuring responses are received within the 21-day statutory period. It also announced the dropping of Sport England, the Gardens Trust, and the Theatres Trust from the list of statutory consultees. 

The Bill also seeks to address the resourcing constraints facing LPAs. Research from the Royal Town Planning Institute shows that there has been an overall net decrease in spending of 43% on planning from £844m in 2009/10 to £480m in 2020/21. Changes in the Bill would allow LPAs to set their own planning fees (with oversight from the Government) to allow them to cover their costs, with the money reinvested back into the system to hire more planners and speed up decision-making.

There has been a notable absence of strategic and spatial planning in England. The Bill introduces Spatial Development Strategies (SDS) which would provide a strategic framework across multiple LPAs with the objective of identifying sustainable areas to build, ability to set housing figures, and ensure a clear joined-up approach between development needs and infrastructure requirements. ​These plans will be produced by combined authorities and unitary authorities, including for those both with or without a Mayor.

This revival of strategic planning is mirrored in the ambition of the Government for greater devolution as signalled in the English Devolution White Paper towards merging local authorities and mayoral combined authorities.

The Bill also includes the widening of powers of development corporations. These will be strengthened to make it easier to deliver large-scale development alongside the required infrastructure. ​They were used in the past to deliver the post-war new towns and play a vital role when the risk or scale of a development is too great for the private sector. ​Their enhanced powers are seen as an important measure to deliver the Government’s ambition of next generation of new towns.

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill contained a wide set of changes, including: 

• Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs): National Policy Statements (NPSs) provide the primary policy basis for decision-taking for major infrastructure projects. These NPS’s are to be reviewed and updated at least every five years, with required amendments being made quicker to reflect legislation, government policies and legal decisions.

• Consultation: Streamlining the consultation requirements for projects – such as windfarms, roads or railway lines.

• Highways and Transport: Other changes to be made to the Highways Act and the Transport and Works Act to reduce bureaucracy.

• Legal challenge: Overhaul the process by which government decisions on major infrastructure projects can be challenged. Meritless cases will only have one – rather than three – attempts at legal challenge.

• Environment: Establish a Nature Restoration Fund to “ensure there is a win-win for both the economy and nature” by ensuring builders can meet their environmental obligations faster and at a greater scale by pooling contributions to fund larger environmental interventions.

• Energy Infrastructure: Introducing a ‘first ready, first connected’ system which will prioritise grid connections for clean energy projects as part of the UK’s route to clean power by 2030, in addition to developers being required to deliver greater community benefits.

However, reforms to other aspects of planning, such as s106, have not yet been proposed at this stage.

Overall, the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill signals the Government approach to putting planning and development at the forefront of economic growth and delivering new homes and achieving energy security. Demonstrating the Government’s ambition to progress with the proposals, the Bill is undergoing second reading, and we expect more detail to emerge as the Bill progresses through the legislative process. In the meantime, we anticipate further interventions via written ministerial statements, called in decisions, and the upcoming English Devolution Bill.

To discuss any of the matters discussed above or any other planning matter, please contact the team.