A Plan for the Future: Making the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Work for Britain

Earlier this month, the long-awaited Planning and Infrastructure Bill was introduced in Parliament. Since the UK’s planning system was first established in the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947, it has become the epitome of democracy’s delivery problem, with the power of a few organised voices hampering the economic interests of the whole country. The current government rightly recognises that this cannot continue, but more work will be needed to truly back the builders over the blockers.

Getting this agenda right is one of the most important things this government can do. At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, we’ve been arguing for a complete deconstruction and reconstruction of the way progressive and mainstream parties do their politics – embracing disruptive delivery. Reforming our outdated planning system is foundational to this agenda, with the potential to deliver the infrastructure the country needs to be fit for the future – faster and at lower cost.

The planning bill is a promising piece of legislation. If done right, it could be momentous, marking a break from the system that has long caused us to under-build the infrastructure the country needs to thrive and overpay for what we’re building. But further work is still needed for it to be as transformational as it could be.

As the bill receives its second reading and continues to the committee stage, it is essential that members of parliament carefully review the bill to ensure that it delivers the radical reform to the planning system that is needed.

The Planning System Is Broken

The UK has one of the world’s most restrictive and laborious systems for delivering housing and infrastructure. Unlike rules-based systems elsewhere, decisions here are made case by case, guided by vague, negotiable rules and often bogged down in drawn-out negotiations. Even nationally significant projects can be delayed – or blocked entirely – at every stage.

The system has had real consequences for the UK. Our inability to build critical electricity-grid infrastructure has slowed down the energy transition, driven up energy costs, and resulted in critical energy, housing and data-centre projects facing decade-long connection delays. Building high-speed rail in Britain costs around 15 times what it does in Spain, France or Germany, with the problems epitomised by HS2’s expensive and time-consuming environmental-compliance measures, such as constructing a kilometre-long bat tunnel costing more than £100 million. The planning process alone for the Lower Thames Crossing has cost more than building the world’s longest road tunnel – Norway’s Lærdal Tunnel – including more than 350,000 pages of planning documents being produced. And the lack of development of new homes in places where people want to live means that in the UK, land makes up a larger proportion of property values than in any other country where data are available apart from Japan and Mexico; in fact, land now accounts for three-quarters of the total value of UK housing while the buildings comprise only one-quarter.

This is the system the Planning and Infrastructure Bill needs to reform. But as with anything, the devil is in the detail and the effectiveness of the reforms will depend on addressing the structural issues that have built up over decades.

The Path to Radical Reform: Four Key Questions for the Government

The government’s plans for reform in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill seek to address a number of the barriers that exist within the system; to reduce the time the planning process takes and enhance certainty for developers. The bill focuses in particular on how to improve the speed of consenting infrastructure, in particular through the Development Consent Order regime that was introduced in 2008. The bill includes a number of welcome changes, such as reducing judicial review, streamlining environmental-impact assessments and mitigations, making deadlines for approvals more strict, and reducing the power of local planning committees.

These are important steps in the right direction, but there are still some questions about the practical impacts of the proposals and whether they represent the truly radical reform the country needs.

1. How is the government planning to deal with the endless stakeholder consultations and lengthy documentation?

A key challenge in today’s planning system is uncertainty – about which rules apply, how much evidence is required, and the high risk of judicial review. This fuels excessive evidence gathering and protracted local consultations, with environmental assessments often stretching to thousands of pages.

While reforms to judicial review aim to reduce the number of complaints, the process remains available – and indeed with capped costs as a result of the implementation of the Aarhus Convention. Legal risk, and the costs and delays it represents, therefore still exists in the system, sustaining the incentive to overcompensate with “gold-plated” planning applications.

The government has already begun to address the statutory requirements by reducing the number of statutory consultees and amending the scope and timeframe in which statutory consultees can comment on Town and Country Planning Act applications.

However, the government should seek to go further in also cutting statutory requirements within the Development Consent Order regime, which contains significant requirements at the pre-application stage. For example, aligning consultation requirements in the Development Consent Order and Town and Country Planning Act systems could shorten pre-application periods and limit unnecessary stakeholder engagement.

A more transformative reform would be a shift towards “bright-line” rules – similar to permitted-development rights – where meeting clear, predefined standards guarantees approval. This approach, often called zoning, could reduce ambiguity and limit grounds for judicial review. Progress is underway through National Development Management Policies, as TBI has previously recommended, but further steps are needed to embed clear, unambiguous rules into local plans via national policy.

2. Is the bill really addressing the delays caused by environmental regulations?

One of the planning bill’s flagship proposals is a shift towards strategic environmental assessments across broader areas, replacing project-by-project evaluations. It also allows developers to offset environmental damage via a Nature Restoration Fund, rather than finalising mitigations upfront. This is a positive step that could help unlock stalled projects, such as the housing projects held back by nutrient neutrality rules.

However, challenges remain. The bill does not disapply the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations of 2017 (“The Habitats Regulations”), which require site-specific assessments for impacts on protected areas, which some experts have pointed out might make the scheme only a marginal improvement. Under these regulations, development can proceed only if it either rules out adverse effects or meets three strict conditions: (1) there is an “imperative reason of overriding public interest”, (2) there is no alternative and (3) compensation is provided.

Implementation of the new approach would be complex. As Sam Dumitriu, head of policy at Britain Remade, has noted, the Nature Restoration Fund applies only where a delivery body has created an Environmental Delivery Plan (EDP). This places significant pressure on organisations like Natural England to produce enough EDPs, ensure fair contributions (that developers trust is fair) and prioritise projects effectively. The government may focus first on large-scale schemes, leaving others stuck in limbo. It’s worth considering whether a more neutral body might be better placed to balance trade-offs and manage these plans. There are likely also limitations for how effective these solutions will be for projects that are more site-specific (such as nuclear power stations) or where the project itself creates the environmental concern (for instance the bat-tunnel issue) – making strategic environmental protections harder.

Disapplying the Habitats Regulations is not an option, at least in the short term. The UK has committed to complying with the Habitats Regulations as a party of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union. However, it is worth exploring whether the process of moving towards a system of strategic assessments and compensation can be made more efficient while still complying with the Habitats Regulations, and whether it is feasible to operationalise a more proportionate system for how species protection is considered.

One option is enhanced strategic planning – such as designating zones with low anticipated environmental impact that would be exempt from full Environmental Impact Assessments. The EU is pursuing this model through acceleration areas for renewables. While the UK’s biodiversity and dense population may limit this approach, such zones could still be identified through enhanced use of data and technology^[_] to understand our land and biodiversity. Where additional scrutiny is needed, these data could enable faster, evidence-based assessments. This could eventually replace lengthy, fragmented in-situ assessments and enable more consistent, proportionate decisions on biodiversity, possibly through a national EDP.

3. How is the government going to address the capacity of planning departments?

A major constraint in the planning system is the limited capacity within local planning departments and the Planning Inspectorate. The government has already introduced additional support to planning departments, and the bill allows councils to increase planning fees to fund their operations. While a necessary step in the short term, expanding planning departments indefinitely is neither a sustainable nor an efficient model, especially as the UK seeks to accelerate housing and infrastructure delivery.

The government should consider whether wider reforms could introduce more bright-line rules into the system, reducing the need for excessive case-by-case judgments and speeding up decision-making. One way to achieve this would be to begin automating parts of the planning process. For example, Microsoft has developed AI-powered permitting tools that help streamline approvals by analysing applications against pre-set rules and flagging only non-compliant cases for human review. Similarly, in British Columbia, municipalities are integrating AI-driven zoning and approvals software, which automates checks for compliance with local regulations, reducing processing times dramatically.

4. Is the government ready to take on local politicians?

A core flaw in the Town and Country Planning Act is the misalignment of incentives in local decision-making. Councils frequently reject development proposals, even when they align with planning policy and have officer approval. This political discretion leads to delays, inconsistency and missed opportunities to deliver essential housing and infrastructure.

To address this, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill proposes removing councillor vetoes for projects that comply with the local plan, transferring final decision-making to planning officers. The exact regulations are still being developed, but the most effective approach would be to make delegation the default, with a clear, limited list of exceptions. Combined with a more rules-based system – such as the emerging National Development Management Policies – this could streamline many decisions and move the UK closer to the zoning models used in other countries.

However, even under this more ambitious model, political oversight is likely to remain for some types of development. This leaves nationally significant projects at risk of local political obstruction. To mitigate this, the government could introduce ministerial call-in powers for strategic projects. For example, any nationally strategic proposal approved by planning officers but facing rejection from councillors could be automatically escalated for ministerial decision, based on civil-service advice. This would reduce political interference, enhance certainty for developers and ensure that decisions on major projects remain aligned with national priorities. The government could also utilise written ministerial statements to encourage certain types of projects to be approved.

Reimagining Planning for the AI Era

Given the importance of planning reform for boosting economic growth and delivering prosperity across the country, it is essential that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is a truly radical break with the past. Answering the above questions, and considering where further enhancements to the bill are needed, will be an important step in getting this right.

This is a moment for the government to think about how to create a planning system that is truly fit for the future. The current technological revolution offers a broad suite of opportunities for speeding up and improving the process for planning approvals – creating a faster, lower-cost and more considered system.

Harnessing these opportunities will require a radical re-think of the underlying principles of the system and how it allows for new ways of doing things. But if we get this right, it could represent a real turning point for the UK, and deliver the infrastructure we need for the future.