How does the government get 1.5 million new homes built in five years and meet challenging renewable energy targets? By pulling every lever possible in the planning system. Last December, the government turned the dial on housing targets in local plans from ‘go slow’ to ‘full steam ahead’, and at the same time formalised the concept of ‘grey belt’ with the hope of unlocking the green belt.
The levers it is pulling in this predominantly England-focused Planning and Infrastructure Bill are further set to streamline development processes, accelerate housing delivery, enhance infrastructure provision, digitise planning services, and strengthen environmental protections while reducing bureaucracy. The bill also aims to rebalance power between central/local authorities, and create a more predictable, efficient planning system that supports economic growth, while maintaining democratic accountability and sustainable development principles.
Nationally Significant Infrastructure
Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) are big-ticket development applications which are determined under the Planning Act 2008 rather than the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (the 1990 act). Determinations are against National Policy Statements (NPSs) which are approved by parliament. Recognising that technologies rapidly move on, the bill sets out a programme for keeping these NPSs up to date.
Recognising too that developers may want flexibility in the determination of the route to consent for their projects, the bill makes provision for NSIPs to be downgraded by a minister, allowing them to be consented under the 1990 act.
The part of the bill that applies to Scotland makes amendments to the consenting regime for overhead electrical cables under the Electricity Act 1989. These amendments will speed up the consenting of this necessary infrastructure, reducing the ability of planning authorities to cause time-intensive inquiries, as well as making provision for financial benefits to flow to communities bearing the brunt of new electrical infrastructure.
Although not strictly NSIP-related, it is good to see tweaks to the Forestry Act 1967 and New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 to fill legislative gaps that many might not know existed. The former will allow the Forestry Commission to use its land for energy generation and the latter will allow the lawful installation of public charging points for electric vehicles on highways.
Planning
The proposed changes to the 1990 act are manifold. Local planning authorities will be allowed to set their own planning application fees and ringfence those fees for development management.
In an attempt to limit the power and effect of local authority planning committees, they will be reduced in size, members must have been trained, and they will be subject to a national scheme of delegation. This will constrain the opportunities for committees to determine planning applications.
In what many will see as a welcome reversal of the last decade’s trend focusing on local and neighbourhood planning, the bill makes provision for the creation of strategic planning authorities. These will comprise larger regional areas that will be required to prepare spatial development strategies, setting out policies for the development of land in their area. Among other things, these policies are to focus on improving biodiversity and adapting to climate change.
Nature recovery
Natural England will be required to prepare Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs). These will identify the impacts of certain developments and set conservation measures for Natural England to take. Local authorities must cooperate with Natural England in its preparation and implementation of these EDPs.
The bill makes provision for a nature restoration levy payable by making developers fund those measures. This payment is intended to unlock developments that are unable to progress for reasons of not being nutrient-neutral due to adding unmitigated new sources of nutrients into protected catchments.
The details of how these provisions will work in practice will follow in the inevitable regulations that will be drafted after the bill receives royal assent. Currently, they have the look and flavour of the existing community infrastructure levy, a development tax with which developers and planning authorities are broadly familiar.
Natural England is to deliver on the EDPs. It will be given new compulsory purchase powers for land connected with the taking of conservation measures.
Compulsory purchase
Compulsory purchase can often be necessary to facilitate the assembly of land for regeneration purposes. The government has already made changes to the compulsory purchase regime. On the heels of recent changes made in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, further changes are proposed in the bill, including electronic service of notices and increased flexibility in the confirmation of compulsory purchase orders.
Conclusion
There are some significant planning-focused amendments in the bill which will affect many different stakeholders: local planning authorities, housebuilders, energy providers, government agencies, local communities and individual landowners. Taken together with the many other changes to the English planning system already introduced by this government (such as the changes to the mechanism for calculating housing supply numbers and the introduction of the grey belt as a subcategory of the green belt) the reforms will make the delivery of new houses easier. But meeting the aspirational target of 1.5 million new homes will turn on market factors as much as legislative changes.
Fergus Charlton is a planning law partner at Michelmores, Bristol
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