The Ministry of Housing has announced the long-awaited Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which is introduced to Parliament today, promising “transformative reforms to get Britain building, tackle blockers and unleash billions in economic growth.”
The wide-ranging measures within the Bill are claimed to enable projects to be “freed from unnecessary bureaucracy,” including measures to create “a planning process that works for the builders, not blockers,” by focusing on streamlining planning, regional strategies, and infrastructure delivery.
A “national scheme of delegation” will set out “which types of applications should be determined by officers and which should go to committee,” and will have controls over the size of planning committees “to ensure good debate is encouraged with large and unwieldy committees banned.” There will also be mandatory training for planning committee members. Councils will also be allowed to set their own planning fees; the “stretched” current system currently running at an annual deficit of £362m. This money will be “reinvested back into the system to speed it up.”
The ‘strategic planning’ innovations introduced across England are in the form of “spatial development strategies,” which will “looking across multiple local planning authorities for the most sustainable areas to build and ensuring there is a clear join-up between development needs and infrastructure requirements.”
In addition, existing Development Corporations will be “strengthened to make it easier to deliver large-scale development” including housing projects with the necessary infrastructure, and a Nature Restoration Fund will be established “to ensure there is a win-win for both the economy and nature by ensuring builders can meet their environmental obligations faster and at a greater scale.” This will include the ability to “pool contributions to fund larger environmental interventions.”
This Bill comes alongside wider planning reforms including the new National Planning Policy Framework, intended to deliver the 1.5 million homes target which has been re-committed to by Government.