Introduction

Over the past year, coinciding with the election of a new government, those involved in the nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP) regime will have seen many new advice notes, consultations, announcements and plans launched. The consultations included the Banner review, the NPPF reform proposals and Consultation on Future Network Design, with December being a particularly busy month seeing the product of a few of these reviews. The announcements made in 2024 ranged from the Autumn Budget, Plan for Change, Planning Reform Working Paper to the Clean Power 2023 Action Plan. New legislation entered the development consent order (DCO) domain, including the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the Infrastructure (Wales) Act, reforming the Developments of National Significance (DNS) regime in Wales. 2025 is gearing up to be a year of change as the results of these consultations, plans and announcements are put into practice and director Jen Ashwell shares her thoughts below. 

Response to NPPF Consultation (DCOs)

The government launched a consultation into the proposed amendments to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which ran from July to September 2024. The government responded to this consultation on 12 December 2024. Notably, within the government’s response was the confirmation that onshore wind will be brought back into the NSIP regime, and that the threshold for onshore wind and solar projects will be raised to 100MW. The response also suggested that other developments, such as laboratories, gigafactories and data centres will be included in the NSIP regime in the future, depending on their scale. The government was in agreement with respondents that there is an urgent need to deliver water infrastructure, and will monitor the current pipeline of projects to consider if any additional projects should be defined as Critical National Priorities. On this topic, there is an Independent Commission into the water sector, which was launched in October 2024, which will inform the government’s long-term approach to ensuring the framework for regulating water infrastructure will attract the investment needed to speed up infrastructure delivery and clean up waterways. The response to the NPPF consultation also confirmed that the government is making some immediate changes to the NPPF to increase deployment of sustainable drainage systems and renewables.

Onshore Wind

In 2024, the government made a major change to the NPPF and lifted the de-facto ban on onshore wind. The government has since confirmed its intention to bring forward legislation in the spring of 2025 to re-introduce onshore wind into the NSIP regime at a threshold of 100MW. Alongside this, the government intends to change the existing threshold for solar projects to qualify as an NSIP from 50MW to 100MW. These changes will be subject to a transitional window which will be put in place until the end of 2025.

Plan for Change

In December 2024, the government published a command paper Plan for Change: Milestones for Mission-led Government. The aim set out in this paper is to track the government’s progress against five missions by the end of the Parliament. One of these missions is to kick start economic growth, and to measure this mission, the milestone has been to fast-track planning decisions on at least 150 major infrastructure projects. Additionally, 95% clean power by 2030 was also listed as part of the drive to secure home-grown energy.

Banner report – call for evidence

At the beginning of 2024, Lord Banner KC was appointed to carry out an independent review of the area of judicial review relating to NSIPs, in particular, the causes of legal challenges brought against NSIPs, and how the existing process can be improved. This report was published on 28 October 2024. The subsequent call for evidence sought views on the recommendations for reform within the October report. The call for evidence ended on 30 December. Some notable recommendations from the October report included that “the current three bites of the cherry to obtain permission to apply for judicial review is excessive and should be reduced to two or one”, and “there may be a case for raising the permission threshold for judicial review claims challenging DCOs.” The government announced on 23 January that it would introduce legislation addressing the first recommendation.

Planning Reform Working Paper: Development and Nature Recovery

In December 2024, the government published part of a series of working papers looking at different areas of planning reform. The idea is that it will inform further policy development in collaboration with the wider sector. This particular paper focuses on how to use funding from developments to deliver environmental improvements, shifting the burden from developers onto the state, with the aim of accelerating development whilst maintaining environmental outcomes. The paper concludes that the shift to an outcomes-focused approach to impact assessment and nature recovery has the potential to support both the deliverability of infrastructure and protection of the environment.

Clean Power 2030 Action Plan

The action plan, which was published in December 2024, sets out the government proposals for reforming the energy system in order to achieve clean power by 2030. The action plan explains that the government’s ambition is that the 2030 power system will see clean energy sources produce at least as much power as Great Britain consumes in total over the whole year, and at least 95% of Great Britain’s generation. The action plan highlights various areas of reform, including the grid connection process and the electricity market. In respect of the planning system, the action plan states that there is an opportunity to rewire the planning system and unblock bottlenecks to ensure projects receive timely decisions. The wide range of proposals set out in the action plan include equipping organisations such as the Planning Inspectorate, statutory consultees and local planning authorities with the tools they need to help deliver Clean Power 2030 and government’s wider missions and updating planning policy vehicles and guidance to support 2030 as a core priority. The action plan also recognises the work devolved administrations are taking to speed up energy infrastructure planning and consenting, such as the Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024 in Wales.

National Energy System Operator Consultation on Future Network Design

The National Energy System Operator (NESO) recently launched a consultation on three of the strategic energy plans needed to support the government’s ambition of achieving clean power by 2030 and net-zero by 2050. The three publications that NESO consulted on are the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan draft methodology, the transitional Centralised Strategic Network Plan Refresh methodology and the Centralised Strategic Network Plan high level principles. The consultation started on 9 December 2024 and closed on 20^th January 2025.

Legislation

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill was announced in the King’s speech in July 2024 and is expected to be introduced in Parliament early this year. The purpose of the bill is to streamline the process of delivering housing and critical infrastructure, including accelerating upgrades to the national grid and boosting renewable energy. The bill will be supported by a new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority and will implement the government’s 10-year infrastructure strategy in conjunction with industry. The government has published several working papers to support the bill. It also published the Planning Reform Working Paper: Streamlining Infrastructure Planning on 26 January 2025 which indicates what is intended for the NSIP regime under the Bill. A separate blog will be published later this week on that paper.

National Policy Statements

In December 2024, the Prime Minister presented the ‘Plan for Change’ publication to Parliament, which confirms that all relevant National Policy Statements will be updated by summer 2025.  As stated in the consultation on the proposed reform to the NPPF, the government’s view is that the revised National Policy Statements will give increased certainty to developers and communities. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will enable the updated National Policy Statements to come forward and will also introduce a review process that provides the opportunity for National Policy Statements to be updated every five years. 

Additional Developments

Autumn 2024 budget

Within the Autumn 2024 budget announcement, the government confirmed it will continue to ensure that the planning system supports public and private investment.  Some other key planning promises made include:

• Responding to the NPPF consultation by end of the year (which was achieved);
• Allocating £46 million to hire 300 graduates and apprentices for council planning teams and to unblock large sites;
• Introducing the Planning and Infrastructure Bill in early 2025;
• Allocating £47 million to support delivery of 28,000 homes held up by nutrient neutrality;
• Allocating £5 million to improve the planning regime for NSIPs;
• Speeding up the 2000-home Liverpool Central docks regeneration scheme;
• Supporting the East West Rail project connecting Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge.

Consultation for BNG for NSIPs

BNG was made mandatory in February 2024 for developments consented under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and is expected to extend to NSIPs in November 2025. According to Natural England, this will be a major step towards nature recovery and enhancing places where people live and work. However, the promised Defra consultation on how BNG will work in practice for NSIPs is yet to emerge and definitely one to keep an eye out for over the coming months.

Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024 (IWA 2024)

The Infrastructure Wales Act was enacted in June 2024, reforming the existing Developments of National Significance process with a new system of ‘Infrastructure Consents’ for ‘Significant Infrastructure Projects’ (SIP). This will cover large-scale energy, water, transport, waste and wastewater projects. Consent of the Welsh Ministers will be required under three triggers, either when a project meets certain thresholds defined in the Act, when a project is ‘directed’ as a SIP or a project is designated as a SIP under the National Development Framework for Wales. In September 2024, the government launched a consultation on Implementing the Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024, which closed on 13 December 2024.

2025 looks set to be a busy year for NSIP consenting and there will no doubt be further consultations to engage with and changes to review as the year progresses. Our Planning and Compulsory Purchase team regularly acts for promotors of NSIPs and those involved in the NSIP regime. Please contact Jen Ashwell, director, or Julian Boswall, partner, for more information.