Footing the bill

Towards a planning system fit for climate, nature and people? The Better Planning Coalition’s Richard Hebditch takes stock of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and looks ahead to where improvements could be made.

No one should have been in any doubt of the Labour government’s intentions to change the planning system. In opposition, Keir Starmer said he would “bulldoze through planning laws” and Labour’s manifesto set out their proposals for radical change.

In the months since coming to power, the government rewrote the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and commenced reviews of all the national policy statements that guide the planning system. Working papers were published on further changes to the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) process, on how planning committees operate, on a new nature restoration fund to replace Habitats Directive-derived protections for nature, and on new ‘brownfield passports’. Housing targets have been increased, meaning many local plans are obsolete as their five-year housing land supply is no longer sufficient for the higher targets.

Alongside this, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has been pursuing wider reforms to local government, publishing the English Devolution White Paper in December 2024. This proposes a more uniform suite of Strategic Authorities across England who, among a range of powers and duties, will have to produce a spatial development strategy. In addition, they will have development control powers similar to the Mayor of London, as well as influence over Homes England on housing and local councils on transport.

Much of the work over the last year is about making planning and local government more logical as viewed from Westminster. The focus is on helping ministers deliver their national policy aims (including the 1.5 million new homes target) by removing blockages and making it easier for them to set policy that local government then has little choice but to implement.

But it’s also about enhancing the state’s (including local planning departments), capability and capacity. Changes include the ability to recover costs through setting their own planning fees, creating the new strategic planning layer and strengthening development corporations.

Councils, housing associations and development corporations need the powers and finances to deliver housing themselves

After this flurry of activity from MHCLG, from the start of 2025 we’ve seen the rhetoric ramp up.

In spring came the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which put these competing policy narratives into legislation. The bill is broad ranging and aims to achieve the following:

• Streamline the NSIP process with changes beyond those for transport and electricity infrastructure planning and permitting processes

• Allow councils to retain income from planning fees

• Create national rules restricting the planning applications that elected councillors (as opposed to officers) will be allowed to decide through a national scheme of delegation

• Set out what should be included in spatial development strategies for the new strategic planning level

• Introduce Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) where developers can pay a levy to help deliver EDPs in place of site-specific mitigation or compensation measures under the Habitats Regulations

• Strengthen the role of development corporations

So where does the bill fall between the two visions within government for planning: one that tries to sweep planning out of the way and one that sees a reformed planning system as the way to deliver housing and infrastructure objectives?

To some extent, we don’t yet know. Much of the bill will be implemented through future guidance and regulations. Ministers have promised that they will consult on the new national scheme of delegation and that Natural England will start piloting EDPs while the bill is still making its way through Parliament. But at the time of writing, there is still no sign of these assurances.

The first part of the bill covers major infrastructure. The NSIP process has a problem with proposals taking longer and longer to get through the system, so tackling the causes of delays is reasonable. But there are risks around quite how much freedom is given to ministers through these changes. For instance, one change will allow the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to move applications from the NSIP process into other planning processes. This is likely to include the Town and Country Planning Act, Highways Act, or Transport and Works Act regimes but could include the use of Local Development Orders or simplified planning zones. This removes the need for much oversight of developments, along with certainty and clarity on how major infrastructure will be determined, and could open to abuse.

The bill’s move to allow local planning authorities to set their own planning fees and to amend the planning fees model is welcome. This investment should help local authority planning departments reinvest fee income from planning applications directly back into their services and recover from over a decade of cuts. In addition, 97% of planning departments report planning skills gaps and, even in the last year, departments were twice as likely to report that their workforce was decreasing rather than increasing.

The move to reintroduce strategic planning is also positive. Land is in short supply and we must plan strategically to manage the many competing demands upon it.

Effective strategic planning will be essential to ensure new developments are located in the right place and designed to both reduce car dependency and support healthy communities.

We welcome that the bill allows for strategic authorities to specify the amount or distribution of housing, including affordable provision. This will allow authorities to respond to the range of local needs rather than relying on housing developers’ proposals, which focus on the most profitable housing and force negotiation for the inclusion of affordable housing within a restrictive viability test.

However, planning reform alone is not enough. Councils, housing associations and development corporations need the powers and finances to deliver housing themselves. Otherwise, they are reliant upon a limited number of volume developers who have strong financial reasons to manage a limited pipeline of housing delivery to maximise profits.

We hope that ministers will say more about the links between strategic planning in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the forthcoming English Devolution Bill and the Land Use Framework being consulted upon by Defra. Strategic planning will not succeed if strategic authorities, and local government more generally, lack the ability to make decisions around new transport services, infrastructure to support new development or areas to protect for nature.

The bill will also give the Secretary of State the power to set a national scheme of delegation for local planning decisions. Councils will not have the freedom to decide themselves which planning applications should be decided by officers and which should go to a planning committee. Delays to a limited number of major schemes is not sufficient to justify excluding elected councillors from key decisions. The welcome measure of ensuring mandatory training of councillors on planning committees is a more proportionate response. The weakening of green belt protection in the revised NPPF, local government reorganisation and more decisions being taken behind closed doors by officers alone could lead to growing resentment rather than building public support for new development.

97% of planning departments report planning skills gaps

EDPs backed by a Nature Restoration Levy to require developers to fund nature recovery, offer potential for some environmental issues. But there are risks that, without safeguards, these proposals could cause significant harm to wildlife. In the rush to develop the proposal, the bill as it stands lacks safeguards as it potentially withdraws the protections derived from the Habitats Directive without guaranteeing a system that will deliver improvements in practice. The Secretary of State’s power to unilaterally amend EDPs lacks key safeguards and could see improvements watered down. The bill includes a viability test where the rate of the levy cannot be set if it threatens the profitability of the development; this could result in an underfunding of the necessary improvements needed to outweigh harm from a development.

In particular, the bill should require benefits to significantly outweigh harm. Evidence from Biodiversity Net Gain and other offsetting schemes is that the anticipated benefits in a plan are not necessarily realised on the ground, so there is a need for legal underpinning to require significant environmental improvement.

Better planning is not only about procedural changes but also the outcomes it enables. A statutory purpose for planning should be the foundation of the government’s reform agenda and demonstrate a clear determination to refocus the system on renewal and sustainable development. Making clear the purpose of planning through a new clause in the bill could tie together all the strands being developed separately. This integrated approach would ensure key elements –biodiversity, water management, landscape and visual impacts, health and wellbeing, transport and climate targets – are considered from the outset. This would help ensure that new infrastructure and built environments contribute positively to our economy, society and environment.

The bill is now going through its committee stage and then to the House of Lords, where it’s likely to face tougher scrutiny. We hope that ministers recognise the concerns from parliamentarians and the public alike over the potential weakening of the planning system. There must be recognition that delivering the government’s objectives needs a strong and capable system that works in the public interest, rather than one that is weakened, sidelined and weighted in favour of private developers.

Richard has been coordinator of the Better Planning Coalition since February 2025. He has worked in external affairs for a range of NGOs, as well as in the Cabinet Office, working to improve relations between the government and voluntary sector.

Landscape Institute response to Development and Nature Recovery

In spring 2025, the government consulted on a Planning Reform Working Paper for Development and Nature Recovery to dovetail with the implementation of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

The Landscape Institute acknowledges the aim of simplifying the process for developers, but we are concerned that nature recovery may be treated as separate from development, rather than being fully integrated into planning and placemaking.

The proposed Nature Restoration Fund may be attractive to developers due to its simplicity and certainty of cost. However, this approach risks isolating nature recovery in designated areas, rather than embedding natural systems as fundamental components of development. This would miss opportunities for delivering integrated, multifunctional landscapes that support biodiversity, climate resilience, and community wellbeing.

The fund may provide benefits in high-density, small-footprint developments – such as urban highrises – or in addressing cumulative impacts from incremental development. However, it is less suited to large-scale, low-rise housing schemes, where green infrastructure, open space, and community access are integral to good design.

We are also concerned about the delivery capacity of responsible agencies. Many lack sufficient funding, multidisciplinary expertise, and access to reliable ecological data. While capital investment may enable the development of initial habitats, long-term monitoring and management are essential to securing lasting environmental benefits and must be properly resourced.

Furthermore, the proposal to substitute on-site mitigation with financial contributions risks undermining the established hierarchy, which prioritises avoiding and minimising harm before restoration or offsetting. It risks normalising offsetting, creating a disconnect between impacted communities and the benefits of nature recovery. The scale of mitigation should be based on relevant landscape character and catchment area assessments and may well cross political boundaries.

To be effective, the proposals must demonstrate genuine environmental net gain and ensure measurable improvements to community wellbeing. The current approach does not yet achieve this.