Sweeping changes introduced in the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill by the government have been well received by the industry at large, promising to create “the biggest building boom in a generation”
Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday 11 March, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the new reforms introduced as part of the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill would lift “the bureaucratic burden which has been holding back developments for too long”.
The new Planning and Infrastructure Bill aims to speed up planning decisions and developments by:
- Planning committees– Establishing a new national scheme of delegation to see which planning applications should be determined by officers and which should go to committee. The size of planning committees will be limited and training will be mandatory for members. Councils will be able to set their own planning fees to cover costs.
- Strategic planning– “Spatial development strategies” will be produced to cover multiple local planning authorities, identifying the most sustainable areas to build, which will ensure “a clear join-up between development needs and infrastructure requirements”
- National Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP)– A new NSIP structure will streamline consultation requirements for major infrastructure projects to enable faster delivery of windfarms, roads and railway lines. Legal challenges will be reduced from three attempts to one for “meritless” cases and changes to the Highways Act and the Transport and Works Act will reduce bureaucracy
- Development corporations– will be strengthened with new enhanced powers to deliver a generation of New Towns
- Compulsory purchase reform– this process will be streamlined and geared towards the public interest, ensuring compensation paid to landowners is not excessive
Infrastructure reforms will include:
- Streamlining the process to install EV charging infrastructure
- Prioritising clean energy projects for grid connections
- Electricity bill discounts for people living within 500m of new pylons
- Forestry authorities in England and Wales will be able to bring forward developments to generate and sell renewable energy on their land
- The number of required exemptions for offshore wind farms will be reduced
- A new scheme to “unlock billions” of investment in renewable power storage and long duration electricity storage (LDES)
A new nature restoration fund will also be established
This fund will pool contributions to larger environmental intitiatives, allowing for builders to waive environmental obligations on single site interventions.
Labour has said that this will remove time-intensive and expensive processes- avoiding costly incidents such as the notorious £100m bat tunnel HS2 were required to build in Buckinghamshire.
Industry voices have welcomed the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill
RIBA’s president, Muyiwa Oki, welcomed the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, saying: “This is a welcome shot in the arm for the construction industry. To ensure the much needed high quality housing and infrastructure, urgent action is required.
“However, to deliver the seismic changes proposed, local planning departments will need to be adequately resourced and supported with the right people, skills and design expertise they need. We look forward to examining the Bill and working with the Government to ensure we create well-designed homes and places that meet the needs for communities to thrive.
“The Bill signifies a step in the right direction to speeding up the planning system. What’s not in question is the desperate need to build quality homes and vibrant places up and down the country.”
Dinny Shaw, head of Planning at Places for People comments: “Today’s announcement on the measures to be included in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill reinforces this Government’s commitment to tackling the housing crisis. Places for People will always support proposals to remove blockages and accelerate decision-making. We hope that through debate, these measures can go further and make an even stronger contribution.
“The status quo still has too many people unable to access the homes they need.”
“While we will continue to pursue new development opportunities as part of our commitment to support the Government in accelerating their homebuilding programme, the sector needs sustained investment and the right skills to turn this ambition into reality.
Legislative reforms must be backed up by a strong commitment in the Spending Review in June. Today is a win for the sector, our Customers and Communities. This must continue.”
“There’s a lot to welcome in the latest stage of the Government’s planning reforms.”
Melanie Leech CBE, chief executive, British Property Federation, said: “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.”
