Planning reform: what to expect from the new Government plans?

The House of Commons has returned after the summer recess. The newly elected Labour government can now resume work on various legislative proposals pledged in its election manifesto. There are several bills which may have impact on commercial property in the UK, most notably the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

The planning system in its current form is considered by the government:

‘a major break on economic growth. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will play a key role in addressing this constrain, unlocking more housing and infrastructure across the country and supporting sustained economic growth’

Prime Minister’s office briefing notes to the King’s Speech provide full details on the government’s plans. The main pledge of building 1.5 million houses has received a lot of coverage. However, the act also focuses on improving the delivery of major infrastructure projects in the UK.

Amongst many objectives, the act is to improve the local planning system by modernising planning committees and increasing capacity to enhance performance for a more dependable service to developers and investors.

It is also to streamline the process for delivering critical infrastructure to include accelerating advancements to the national grid and enhancing renewable energy through simplifying the consenting process for major infrastructure projects.

Some of the background key issues quoted are alarming but perhaps not surprising:

• Time taken to deliver planning determinations is increasing; with only 1% of local planning authorities exceeding 60 per cent of major applications being decided within the prescribed 13-week timescales
• Local planning services operational costs are subject to a funding shortall estimated at £262 million per year
• The National Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime good track record for delivering decisions on major infrastructure projects is declining, with consents taking much longer to be decided and the number of legal challenges increasing

Consultation

The consultation on proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and other changes to the planning system is ongoing and due to close on 24 September 2024. The consultation is seeking views on revising the NPPF as well as on wider policy proposals such as increasing planning fees, local plan intervention criteria and NSIP framework.

Chapter 7 of the consultation sets out how the proposed changes to the NPPF are to aid construction of the key infrastructure and future commercial opportunities. The changes are to make it easier to deliver laboratories, gigafactories, data centres and digital infrastructure together with any facilities required to aid the wider supply chain. The local plans are to be under ‘positive expectation’ to identify suitable sites for the key industries.

This is to ensure suitable access to laboratory space essential to the UK’s research and development activities for sectors such as the life sciences. Delivering on gigafactories is essential for the electric vehicle supply chain, whilst improving digital infrastructure such as data centres is to enable AI deployment and hosting all cloud-based data. Improving the national network of storage and distribution infrastructure is to aid growth in freight and logistics sector.  Changes are also considered for the NSIP regime to ensure that remains fit for purpose for infrastructure projects of national significance.

Perhaps not as exciting but potentially affecting the day-to-day development activities are the proposed changes to the planning application fees covered in chapter 11 of the consultation paper.

It is stated that the current planning fees are not sufficient to cover the full cost of some planning applications which is the cause of the overall funding shortfall for local planning authority services. The increase of planning fees is to allow local planning authorities to have more of the resources needed to determine applications within the prescribed statutory timescales. The local planning authorities’ performance is to be monitored centrally with the under-performing authorities being held to account.

The proposed fee increases range greatly and in general the government is seeking the public’s view on various proposals such as householder application fees being increased to £528.

Further the consultation sets out proposals for localisation of planning applications fees as a better system for reflecting the costs incurred by the local planning authorities. There are two options being considered such as ‘full localisation’ with a duty on all local planning authorities to set their own fees; or ‘local variation’ which would maintain a nationally set default fee but giving local planning authorities a right to vary some fees locally.

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