Charles III - “My Ministers will get Britain building”
Charles III - “My Ministers will get Britain building, including through planning reform, as they seek to accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure and housing”
And with those historic words His Majesty introduced the Planning and Infrastructure Bill… but dear readers, what does it mean?
The current planning regime acts as a major brake on economic growth. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will play a key role in addressing this constraint, unlocking more housing and infrastructure across the country and supporting sustained economic growth. The planning system must be an enabler of growth – enabling democratic engagement with how, not if, homes and infrastructure are built.
The new Government is committed to reforming the planning system as it is key to unlocking our country’s economic growth – enabling us to deliver both the housing and critical infrastructure that communities need. The Bill will speed up and streamline the planning process to build more homes of all tenures.
It will accelerate housebuilding and infrastructure delivery by streamlining the delivery process and improving local planning decision making by modernising planning committees and increasing local planning authorities’ capacity, to improve performance and decision making, providing a more predictable service to developers and investors. (NOTE Details to follow… watch this space!)
It will also set out how development will be used to fund nature recovery where currently both are stalled, unlocking a win-win outcome for the economy and for nature, because we know we can do better than the status quo. Our commitment to the environment is unwavering, which is why the Government will work with nature delivery organisations, stakeholders and the sector over the summer to determine the best way forward. We will only act in legislation where we can confirm to Parliament that the steps we are taking will deliver positive environmental outcomes. Where we can demonstrate this, the Bill will deliver any necessary changes.
Timescales for planning decision-making are growing: only 9 per cent of Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) are determining more than 70 per cent of non-major applications within 8 weeks. Only 1 per cent of LPAs determine more than 60 per cent of major applications within the statutory 13-week period. This Bill will look to help reverse this trend, boosting capacity at a local level and speeding up decision-making, which will in turn help to accelerate a future pipeline of housing delivery.
His Maj and the new Government are making all the right noises and now we need to see how all of this will be put into practice. I don’t know about you, but I am really excited and I can’t wait to see the solutions in detail!
We have an event tomorrow afternoon in Central London to discuss this in greater detail. Drop me a line if you want to come along and hear our experts analyse this.
Until next week,
Henry
07736121014