The new Planning and Infrastructure Bill aims to tighten decision-making timescales to boost local building, the government says.
The new bill, which follows the King’s Speech, bids to green-light more homes and infrastructure projects across the country to support economic growth.
The government points out that only 9% of local planning authorities decide on more than 70% of non-major applications within eight weeks, while only 1% of LPAs determine more than 60% of major applications within the statutory 13-week period.
The legislation also looks to increase the capacity of local planning authorities across England and Wales, despite an estimated funding shortfall of £262m last year.
The proposed bill also aims to:
- Streamline the delivery process for critical infrastructure
- Reform compulsory purchase compensation rules
Labour has also pledged to reform the national planning framework, which includes restoring compulsory housing goals for local authorities.
But the paper also hints at the opposition the government may face as it bids to speed up the planning process.
It points out that the existing Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project regime, established to fast-track projects, has actually seen current average decision-making times slow to 4.2 years, from 2.6 years in the decade up to 2021.
The paper adds: “Legal challenges have also increased since 2021 (4 successful out of 15 legal challenges), prompting actors to increase the scope and volume of their environmental impact assessments to tens of thousands of pages.”
Propertymark says the government needs to clarify how it intends to deliver more homes.
The professional body has previously argued that the new UK Government would need to build a large, new housing estate with over 1000 homes every day to hit its target of 1.5m new homes by 2029.
Propertymark chief executive officer Nathan Emerson says: “For the new government to meet its ambitious housing targets there must be a full review and wide-ranging stakeholder engagement to ensure there is sensible infrastructure in place to enable new developments to flourish and compliment the areas they are built within.”
Pocket Living managing director Paul Rickard adds: “To deliver this welcome and ambitious agenda we not only need planning reform and measures to get the builders building again, including encouraging new entrants to the housebuilding sector, especially among our depleted ranks of small and medium-sized enterprises developers who have dwindled over the last 30 years.
“We also need to see a transformational change in how the government releases public sector land, invests in measures to unlock difficult brownfield sites, and promotes new forms of public/private partnership models.”
British Property Federation head of communications Dominic Curran points out: “Planning for homes must always take account of employment and wider infrastructure needs for new communities, such as logistics provision and ensuring enough grid capacity for new developments.”
