Download PDF

Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025: Key Changes and Implications

January 2026

On 18 December 2025, the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (“the Act”) came into force, marking an important milestone in the government’s long term growth strategy. Designed to reduce delays and costs, the Act aims to accelerate construction and development across the UK by removing perceived barriers in the planning process.

The Act has a particular focus on streamlining approvals for major infrastructure projects, supporting clean energy initiatives, prioritising electrical grid connections, accelerating reservoir construction, and enabling faster delivery of homes and critical infrastructure. It forms a central part of the government’s ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes and fast-track planning decisions on at least 150 major economic infrastructure projects.

For contractors, developers and investors, understanding the implications of the Act is critical to navigating the opportunities and risks it creates. Alongside providing critical infrastructure at greater speed and reduced cost, the Act aims to make UK infrastructure and housing schemes more appealing to investors.

Although the Act promises efficiency and certainty for developers, concerns have been raised about potential risks, including reduced environmental oversight and weakened accountability.

The Act has five key parts:

1. Infrastructure;
2. Planning;
3. Development and nature recovery;
4. Development corporations; and
5. Compulsory Purchase.

This article will focus on Parts 1, 3 and 4, which will be of the greatest importance to the construction supply chain.

Part 1: Infrastructure

Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs)

The Act looks to tackle perceived barriers and bottlenecks in the NSIPs regime, with a focus on aiming to reduce the time that NSIPs can remain tangled up in legal proceedings before construction can commence, including by:

• Reducing delays: certain pre-application requirements have been removed, and the paper permission stage for judicial review challenges has been replaced in its entirety with oral hearings.
• Limiting legal challenges against government decisions for major infrastructure projects: for cases deemed “totally without merit” at the permission stage, only one challenge is permitted (down from three).
• National Policy Statements (NPSs): NPSs, which provide guidance on how NSIP applications are to be prepared and determined, must now be reviewed at least every five years. This provides developers and potential investors with greater clarity as to the government’s planning process and future infrastructure plans.
• Streamlining the NPS planning process: the Secretary of State will have the power to direct that development consent is not required for specific projects, allowing them to proceed under the Town and County Planning Act 1990 where appropriate.

Electricity infrastructure

The Act advances the government’s reforms to the electrical grid connection regime by prioritising clean energy and ready-to-build developments, replacing the “first come, first served” approach. Although applicable to the entire grid connection regime, the Act’s changes have a particular focus upon connections for industrial sites and data centres. The changes offer greater certainty as to when the grid connections for their projects will ‘go online’ by removing backlogs, with the aim of promoting greater confidence to developers, investors, and all others involved in such projects.  

The changes implemented in the Act take place within the wider framework of TMO4+ grid connection reforms. For more details, please see our previous articles here.

Transport infrastructure

The Act also amends the Highways Act 1980 and the Transport and Works Act 1992, focusing on streamlining the process for infrastructure development and improving the efficiency of delivering new transport schemes, including road, rail, tramways and waterways, on both the national and local level. Following the amendments, public authorities have wider powers to recover costs in relation to planning consent, and statutory deadlines are introduced for determining applications and decisions on certain schemes and orders.

Part 3: Development and nature recovery

The Act allows for designated delivery bodies (for example Natural England) to meet their environmental obligations by promulgating Environmental Delivery Plans (“EDPs”). EDPs are set to outline strategic conservation measures for protected sites and species, and include a nature restoration levy payable by developers. EDPs cover specific geographical areas and development types, setting out the area in which a specific development can be undertaken and the kind of development.

Developers are entitled to use an EDP and, if they do, will not be required to undertake their own assessments or deliver project-specific mitigations for that specific development. While EDPs aim to simplify compliance and fast-track developments, concerns have been raised that they risk undermining site-specific protections and failing to guarantee meaningful nature recovery. The government’s view is that overall environmental standards will be maintained, but concerns remain about reduced accountability for developers.

Part 4: Development corporations

Development corporations are statutory bodies set up for the purpose of urban development and regeneration. These corporations gain greater flexibility and consistency under the Act. All development corporations are subject to the same objective of contributing to sustainable development and climate change mitigation.

The Act lifts existing restrictions on development corporations providing rail and tram infrastructure, with a new duty for local transport authorities to cooperate with development corporations. These changes expand the scope and autonomy of development corporations, though questions persist about oversight and alignment with national objectives.

Key takeaways

The Act seeks to modernise the planning system, remove barriers and accelerate delivery of strategic projects in order to meet the government’s long term targets. By streamlining processes around the pre-construction stage of a project, the aim is to give all parties more certainty as to when their projects can commence and complete, and when a return on their investments can be realised. Removing these perceived stumbling blocks should fast-track construction and development, helping to meet the government’s infrastructure strategy and to realise private-sector investment.

However, the Act’s impact remains uncertain. While faster approvals may benefit developers and funders, the relaxation of environmental requirements and increased autonomy for development corporations could pose risks to sustainability and governance, and could themselves give rise to additional legal challenges.

The changes to the judicial review system, although potentially fast-tracking and decreasing the costs of infrastructure developments, reduce the avenues for challenge and oversight. While this means greater certainty for developers and investors, it reduces the right to challenge for communities and environmental groups.

If you require advice on the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, or any advice on your infrastructure projects, please contact Cameron Baker, Charlie Bayliss and our Construction, Engineering and Infrastructure team.

Download PDF