The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 heralds major planning regime change

The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 was passed by Parliament on 18 December 2025. It contains a range of provisions that are aimed at speeding up decision-making (primarily in England) which, depending on your particular stance, could be of general interest, project-specific interest or procedural interest.

There are changes to the planning system that will affect developer applicants, decision-takers and decision makers, statutory consultees and those whose primary focus is as an objector.

What is changing?

Just to give a flavour of the range of these provisions:

• The first Part makes changes to the system for water, highway and energy infrastructure planning, among other things, allowing the courts to refuse to entertain challenges to development consent orders that are totally without merit, permitting the Forestry Commissioners to use the forestry estate for the purposes of energy generation, and broadening the scope of the street works definitions to allow EV charging infrastructure to be installed.
• Part 2 will allow local planning authorities certain autonomies in the setting and utilisation of planning application fees. Committee members will require training and the making of planning decisions will have to be in accordance with a national scheme of delegation. New strategic planning authorities will be required to prepare spatial development strategies. Developers whose planning permissions are challenged will have an extended period in which to lawfully commence their approved developments that survive the challenge.
• The key provisions in this Part deal with the mitigation of environmental impacts arising from developments through the imposition of a nature restoration levy on developments to fund environmental delivery plans to tackle certain ‘big ticket’ environmental constraints.
• Across the other Parts are amendments to the compulsory purchase code and changes aimed at new town developments.

When will the provisions be effective?

The desired outcomes from these provisions will take time to be realised. Firstly and fundamentally, the provisions have to be ‘brought into force’ before they apply. The Planning and Infrastructure Act follows the common practice for Parliamentary Acts with some provisions coming into effect immediately, while others require the Secretary of State to make regulations to bring them into effect. These may be simple ‘commencement’ regulations which may either bring specific Act provisions into effect immediately the regulations themselves are in force, or they may set a date, usually in the near future, when the provision will come into force. Still other provisions in the new Act are themselves the bare bones of a statutory provision, requiring the meat to set out in detailed regulations, which usually include setting dates when the details in the regulations take effect.

And then there are transition provisions, again usually set out in regulations, which explain how the changes are to apply to applications or development consent order determinations that are already commenced.

Applicants may hope to be on one side or the other of the new provisions, requiring second-guessing of the Secretary of State’s intentions, balancing these off against the other factors influencing their development’s timeline.

This ‘coming into force’ process makes for complications, with clarity coming over time. We have already had the first commencement order, made on 29 December, bringing several provisions into effect on that date, setting dates in February and April whereby other provisions will come into effect, and detailing the transitional provisions. It’s necessarily turgid reading.

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Fergus Charlton

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