Planning in 2025

2024 has delivered a series of changes to the planning regime – in December alone, the Government announced significant and wide-ranging changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, revisions to the national Planning Practice Guidance, a new Affordable Housing “Clearing Service” (to facilitate the sale of unsold affordable housing) and a new white paper on devolution.

The Government’s agenda for changes to the planning regime continues into the New Year, and we are anticipating very significant changes to the legislative regime in 2025 and beyond, as follows.

Housing and Infrastructure Bill

The Housing and Infrastructure Bill is expected to be a “catch-all” planning bill which captures all of the Government’s ambitions for planning reform on the immediate horizon. A broad skeleton of the Bill was included in the explanatory notes supporting the King’s Speech in July.

From those notes we can see that the Government’s immediate objective is to “speed up and streamline the planning process to build homes of all tenures and accelerate the delivery of major infrastructure projects”. Their primary concern in this respect is the speed of decision-making.

We know that the following elements are expected to form part of the Bill:

1. Simplifying the consenting process for major infrastructure projects;
2. Reforming CPO compensation “to ensure that compensation paid to landowners is fair but not excessive where important social and physical infrastructure and affordable housing are being delivered”. This has been taken in the development industry to represent a form of land value capping;
3. Modernising planning committees. This may include proposals to require the delegation of specific categories of application to officers and limit the size of committees. A working paper on this topic was published in December;
4. Increasing local authority planning officer capacity. 300 new officers were funded by the Autumn Budget, but the Government may expand on this;
5. Funding nature recovery where development is stalled. While not explicitly framed as such, this would appear to be a new set of measures to address nutrient neutrality. The Government published a working paper on nature recovery and potential strategies to address this on 15 December 2024.

Other elements which we anticipate may form part of the Bill include:

1. Wider reform to the compulsory purchase process. The Government’s response to the NPPF consultation indicates that the Bill will not be limited to CPO compensation matters. The Government has just started a process of consultation on potential CPO reforms, due to conclude on 13 February 2025;
2. Additional powers to enable local planning authorities to refuse applications made by developers who have failed to build out previous planning permissions within the authority’s area;
3. A power enabling local planning authorities to vary and/or set locally-specific planning application fees;
4. Additional measures to address Hillside risks, where drop-in planning applications conflict with pre-existing outline permissions.

There is no immediate timetable for consultation on the Bill, but we expect this to be next on the Government’s agenda following the amendments to the NPPF.

New Towns

The Government’s New Towns taskforce reported to Government in September 2024, primarily looking at new locations for significant schemes of development (in excess of 10,000 residential units). The taskforce’s call for information closed on 13 December, and they are currently looking at the information submitted with a view to identifying and reporting on regionally significant schemes.

Strategic planning

The revised NPPF includes content which effectively lays the groundwork for strategic planning in the future, primarily by introducing stronger content on co-operation between authorities. The Government has previously committed to introducing legislation to require authorities to take a cross-boundary strategic planning approach.

While the Government has committed to taking the steps needed to implement a strategic approach to planning, there is no immediate information available on the intended timetable or the practical mechanics of how this will be delivered. The expectation within the development industry has been that the Government would consult on changes before the end of 2024, but this is looking increasingly unlikely.

National policies for decision-making

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 put in place a framework for nationally-set development policies to form part of the development plan, covering topics of national importance in relation to the development or use of land in England.

The Government has now confirmed that it intends to consult on a set of national policies for decision-making in spring 2025. 

Ongoing policy review

Following the revised NPPF, the Government intends to publish further policy updates in 2025. Some of those changes have been foreshadowed by Government statements at the end of 2024:

1. The Government will review the Planning Policy for Traveller Sites during the course of the year;
2. New planning practice guidance on Local Nature Recovery Strategies will be published as soon as possible in January 2025;
3. Further guidance on Green Belt reviews will be published in January 2025, with the objective of ensuring a consistent approach to the identification of grey belt land. Limited guidance was included in the NPPF consultation document which we expect to be finalised and codified;
4. The Government has committed to updating the National Design Guide and National Model Design Code in spring 2025;
5. The Government has indicated that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is carrying out an active review into whether the biodiversity net gain regime is working as intended, or whether the Department needs to do more in this respect. We also understand that Natural England intends to publish a report in 2025 evaluating progress to date on biodiversity net gain;
6. There will be a review of guidance on viability and benchmark land values in 2025. The NPPF consultation included a variety of benchmark land value proposals in relation to Green Belt sites which did not ultimately form part of the final NPPF amendments, but we expect to see this concept revisited as part of the review.

Continued and expanded intervention

The Government has opted to directly take planning decisions where possible, and has exercised its powers to call-in decisions and recover appeals at a significantly greater rate than previous administrations.

As part of this ongoing approach, the recent amendments to the Government’s Planning Practice Guidance have changed the policy basis for interventions to local plan-making. The policy criteria was previously outlined in a 2017 Housing White Paper following consultation in 2016. The revised Planning Practice Guidance content moves away from that previously specific criteria, widening the scope of the Government’s ability to intervene.

Conclusion

Throughout 2025, we expect the Government to remain focused on making changes to the planning regime with the objective of enabling and unlocking the delivery of homes. 

In that context, we are expecting a regular cadence of consultation and legislative reform, leading with the tentpole reform of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which we expect to hear more about the substance of in early 2025.

If you have any queries on these reforms or the impact on housing, please contact me or Gary Soloman, Partner, in our Planning and Compulsory Purchase team.