Planning and Infrastructure Bill introduced promising radical acceleration of housebuilding and development

The government will formally introduce its Planning and Infrastructure Bill today.

The government said it will see significant measures introduced to speed up planning decisions to boost housebuilding and "remove unnecessary blockers and challenges to the delivery of vital developments like roads, railway lines and windfarms". It added: "This will boost economic growth, connectivity and energy security whilst also delivering for the environment."

The bill comes alongside wider planning reforms including the new National Planning Policy Framework and is at the heart of the government's Plan for Change proposals to deliver the 1.5 million homes it promised in its manifesto alongside 150 major projects. The government added that it will "ensure Britain can become a clean energy superpower through building the necessary infrastructure, and help to raise living standards by ensuring working people have more money in their pocket".

People living near new electricity transmission infrastructure will also receive up to £2,500 over 10 years off their energy bills.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Angela Rayner, said: "We’re creating the biggest building boom in a generation – as a major step forward in getting Britain building again and unleashing economic growth in every corner of the country, by lifting the bureaucratic burden which has been holding back developments for too long.

"The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will unleash seismic reforms to help builders get shovels in the ground quicker to build more homes, and the vital infrastructure we need to improve transport links and make Britain a clean energy superpower to protect bill payers. It will help us to deliver the 1.5 million homes we have committed to so we can tackle the housing crisis we have inherited head on – not only for people desperate to buy a home, but for the families and young children stuck in temporary accommodation and in need of a safe, secure roof over their heads. These reforms are at the heart of our Plan for Change, ensuring we are backing the builders, taking on the blockers, and delivering the homes and infrastructure this country so badly needs."

Planning decisions will be streamlined through the introduction of a national scheme of delegation that will set out which types of applications should be determined by officers and which should go to committee, have controls over the size of planning committees to ensure good debate is encouraged with "large and unwieldy committees banned", and mandatory training for planning committee members.

Councils will also be allowed to set their own planning fees to allow them to cover their costs with the system currently running at a deficit of £362 million in the recent year. This will be reinvested back into the system to speed it up.

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 local planning authorities for the most sustainable areas to build and ensuring there is a clear join-up between development needs and infrastructure requirements. These plans will be produced by mayors, or by local authorities in some cases.

Development Corporations will be strengthened to make it easier to deliver large-scale development – like the government’s new towns – and build the oft-mentioned 1.5 million homes alongside the required infrastructure. They were used 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 "will help deliver the vision for the next generation of new towns", the government said.

Land needed to drive forward housing or major developments could also be bought more efficiently thanks to reforms, the government said. The compulsory purchase process – which allows land to be acquired for projects that are in the public interest – will be improved to ensure "important developments delivering public benefits can progress".

A Nature Restoration Fund will be established 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". These changes will remove time-intensive and costly processes, with payments into the fund allowing building to proceed while wider action is taken to secure the environmental improvements we need, the government said.

The Bill will ensure a faster NSIP regime, the government said, promising to make sure the consultation requirements for projects – such as windfarms, roads or railway lines – are streamlined, and ensure the national policies against which infrastructure applications are assessed are updated at least every five years so the government’s priorities are clear. Other changes will be made to the Highways Act and the Transport and Works Act to reduce bureaucracy so transport projects can progress more quickly.

The government will 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. Data shows that 58% of all decisions on major infrastructure were taken to court.

Approved clean energy projects, including wind and solar, will be prioritised for grid connections. Some projects currently face waits of over 10 years. A "first ready, first connected" system will replace the "first come, first served" approach. Reforming the grid queue will also accelerate connections for industrial sites and data centres.

People living within 500 metres of new pylons across Great Britain will get money off their electricity bills up to £2,500 over 10 years, under these plans. Separate new guidance will set out how developers should ensure communities hosting transmission infrastructure can benefit, by funding projects like sports clubs, educational programmes or leisure facilities. This guidance means communities could get £200,000 worth of funding per kilometre of overhead electricity cable in their area, and £530,000 per substation. Developers will closely consult with eligible communities on the funds and how best to spend them, the government said.

• Streamlining the process to install EV charging infrastructure
• A new scheme "to unlock billions of pounds of investment" in long duration electricity storage to store renewable power and deliver the first major projects in four decades.
• Changes to the outdated planning rules for electricity infrastructure in Scotland that will streamline the consent process to enable decisions.  
• An extension to the generator commissioning period from 18 to 27 months to reduce the number of offshore wind farms requiring exemptions when applying for licences to connect to onshore cables and substations.  
• Allowing forestry authorities in England and Wales, including the Forestry Commission, to bring forward development proposals, on the land they manage, for renewable electricity from renewable sources– and to sell that electricity.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors's chief executive Justin Young welcomed the Bill, adding: “These reforms will be crucial to tackle the bureaucracy that is standing in the way of new homes, buildings, and critical infrastructure.
“Investing in our built and natural environment now, will help us realise the homes and places that we need for the future.”

Its senior specialist, land and resources, Tony Mulhall, said: “Getting these reforms right is crucial for achieving the ambitious plans for building that the UK Government set out last summer. Retaining important judicial reviews while limiting the scope for vexatious delays is a proportionate response. This together with an overall reduction in bureaucracy will prove crucial for getting more building projects off the ground. The bill provides a necessary balance between the need to boost building developments, whilst protecting the natural world through a nature restoration fund, driving green initiatives.

Melanie Leech, the chief executive of the British Property Federation, said: “There’s a lot to welcome in the latest stage of the Government’s planning reforms. We called for strategic planning, easier brownfield development and a more certain local planning process in our planning manifesto ‘Building More, Building Better’ last year and it seems that Government have listened. Planning at the ‘larger-than-local’ level should mean that housing targets are allocated more sensibly, and that there’s better planning for employment uses. As part of that there should be a standard method for planning for jobs so that needs are assessed consistently around the country. However, it is vital that all of this is adequately resourced in the forthcoming Spending Review if it is to deliver transformational change in the planning system.   

Greater delegation of planning decisions to planning officers and the better functioning of planning committees will, when combined with wider local government reform, help to improve decision-making and better deploy resource in the system by freeing up committees to deal with larger, more complex developments.

We also support measures to help developers meet their environmental obligations - but want to understand how this will work in practice. We should always aim to mitigate negative environmental impacts within the development site but recognise this isn’t always possible.

The recent changes to Compulsory Purchase Orders in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act haven’t really been tested yet, so we need to proceed cautiously with further changes and make sure we do it in a way which fairly balances needs of communities with rights of landowners and stimulates rather than inhibits development.

We’re especially pleased about the proposed measures to reduce the friction costs in the development approval process by making the various statutory consultees more focused on supporting, rather than preventing, growth. While they serve important functions, statutory consultees are often under-resourced and don’t always respond to applications in a timely manner, or indeed see it as a priority to do so – this has to change if Government is going to meet its housing targets and get investment in the new workplaces and community infrastructure that we need.”

Pete Gladwell, the group managing director, public investment, L&G, said: “To drive national economic growth, boost productivity, achieve positive environmental impact, and deliver genuinely affordable housing, the barriers hindering the delivery of homes and clean energy infrastructure in Britain must be removed. We welcome the introduction of the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill to Parliament today, which marks a significant and positive step in addressing these obstacles and paves the way for further long-term investment from companies like L&G, enabling the faster delivery of new homes and clean energy infrastructure.”