Planning and Infrastructure Bill to drive reform

Miniature model houses.

The chancellor has announced her plans to accelerate housing building and reform through building 1.5 million new homes over five years and 150 infrastructure projects by the end of parliament. This follows the overhaul of the National Planning Policy Framework, which streamlined the process of gaining planning permission. 

Chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves said: “I am fighting every single day in our mission to kick start the economy, deliver on our Plan for change, and make working people better off. That includes avenues that others have shied away from.

“Too often the answer to new development has been “no”. But that is the attitude that has stunted economic growth and left working people worse off. We need to do things differently and that journey began as soon as I started at the Treasury in July. These are our next steps and I can say for certain, there is more to come.”

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will provide the powers to accelerate infrastructure and homes that the government needs to deliver their ambitions and boost the economy. The new Bill is set to streamline decisions on nationally significant infrastructure projects, make consultation requirements more proportionate, and ensuring that National Policy Statements are updated at every five years to reassure developers and speed up decisions. This is set to come into force alongside reforms of environmental impact assessments, which are set to be replaced by Environmental Outcome Reports. These are much simpler and much clearer, with a roadmap to be published on the delivery of these in the coming months.

The new measures to push growth include when developers submit an application for acceptable schemes in key areas, such as high potential locations near commuter train station, the default answer to that development is a ‘yes’. This aims to create more housing at a greater density in areas central to local communities, and boosting the UK’s economy.

The government also aims to streamline processes regarding critical infrastructure projects, which involves scrutinising the input from expert bodies who are required to consult, and replacing the systems of environmental assessment to speed up the process, whilst still protecting the environment.

A new project set to benefit from the chancellor’s new plans is around Old Trafford in Manchester, which will see the development of a new housing, commercial, and public space as an example of the new development model that will accelerate growth nationwide.

The new proposals set out to tackle several years of decline and underinvestment. Last year, homebuilding fell below 200,000 homes, and permissions reached their lowest for over a decade. The government is setting out to overturn that, with 13 planning decisions taken by ministers over 90 per cent of which within the target timeframe, as well as nine nationally significant infrastructure projects approved, from airports to solar farms to data centres.

The government has pledged to make 150 decisions on these major economic infrastructure applications over this parliament, which is more than double the decisions that had been made in the previous parliament and more than 130 made since 2011.

Deputy prime minister and Secretary of State for housing, Angela Rayner said: “From day one I have been clear that bold action is needed to remove the blockers who put a chokehold on growth. That’s why we are putting growth at the heart of our planning system.

“Growth means higher wages, better living standards, families raising their children in safer homeland the next generation taking their first steps onto the housing ladder.

“This year we will go even further to ament he dream of homeownership a reality for millions and fix the housing criss we inherited for good — getting more shovels in the ground to build the homes and vital infrastructure that our communities so desperately need.”

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