BLOGS

The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 is now law. Royal Assent landed on 18 December 2025, and ministers have been phasing in provisions ever since. Combined with a revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) — consulted on through March 2026 — this represents, by most measures, the most ambitious package of planning reform since the Localism Act of 2011.

The political intent is clear: get Britain building. The harder question is whether the machinery of local government, development finance, and the housebuilding sector itself can actually respond.

A target that no government has ever hit

Labour's headline pledge is 1.5 million new homes delivered by the end of this parliament in 2029. To get there, England needs to be completing around 300,000 homes per year. No modern government has achieved that.

The Office for Budget Responsibility now expects net additions to the housing stock to fall to approximately 215,000 in 2026 — down from an average closer to 260,000 in the early 2020s. Industry forecasters are even more pessimistic, with some projecting as few as 160,000 completions this year. That is roughly half of what the government's own roadmap requires.

Planning approvals in England fell persistently after early 2024, a decline attributed to political uncertainty around the general election, regulatory flux, and the chill effect of biodiversity net gain (BNG) requirements and nutrient neutrality obligations on marginal sites. REalyse planning data shows a marked contraction in residential scheme approvals across several major growth corridors during 2024, with pipeline volumes only beginning to stabilise heading into mid-2025.

The gap between permissions granted and homes actually built tells its own story. An estimated 1.2 million homes currently hold planning permission but have not broken ground. Unlocking that backlog — not just reforming the consent process — may be the more immediate lever for boosting supply.

What the Planning and Infrastructure Act actually changes

For practitioners and investors, the Act's most consequential provisions cluster around four areas.

1. Streamlined consenting and faster decisions

The Act curtails councillors' ability to override planning officer recommendations on straightforward housing applications — a direct response to years of politicised refusals frustrating developers. In theory, this should reduce the unpredictability that has long pushed up risk premiums and delivery timescales. In practice, the impact will vary considerably authority by authority.

Judicial review procedures for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) have also been tightened: the paper permission stage is removed, and claims go straight to an oral hearing. For large-scale residential-led schemes, this could meaningfully reduce legal exposure and associated programme risk.

2. Strategic planning returns via Spatial Development Strategies

One of the Act's most structurally important provisions is the reintroduction of sub-regional strategic planning through Spatial Development Strategies (SDS). Housing need cannot be met entirely within individual local authority boundaries — a truth that the last decade of Localism-era planning consistently failed to confront.

SDS frameworks will align housing, infrastructure, and transport planning at a scale that individual Local Plans cannot. For investors and developers with cross-boundary land positions or build-to-rent pipelines, this creates new visibility over longer-term supply trajectories — but also introduces a new layer of plan-making that will take time to bed in.

3. Environmental Delivery Plans and the Nature Restoration Fund

Biodiversity net gain obligations, nutrient neutrality constraints, and local nature recovery strategies have collectively become one of the most significant friction points for residential development — particularly for small and medium-sized developers who lack the resources to navigate complex mitigation requirements site by site.

The Act introduces Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) and a Nature Restoration Fund as a strategic response. Rather than resolving ecological constraints on a project-by-project basis, EDPs will establish landscape-scale mitigation frameworks that individual sites can pay into. First EDP frameworks are expected to begin consultation during 2026, with the earliest plans coming into effect by late 2026 or early 2027.

For smaller operators, this could represent meaningful relief — provided the fund is sufficiently capitalised and local authorities can administer it efficiently.

4. Compulsory purchase reform and land value capture

The Act substantially reforms compulsory purchase order (CPO) powers, enabling land acquisition closer to existing use value in certain circumstances and strengthening the role of development corporations in assembling sites. From 18 February 2026, many of these provisions are in force in England, with Wales requiring separate commencement orders.

For brownfield regeneration and urban extension schemes, these changes may accelerate site assembly that has previously stalled on landowner hold-out value. REalyse land data covering title ownership patterns in major growth corridors shows a significant proportion of developable urban fringe sites held in fragmented ownership structures — precisely the conditions where CPO reform matters most.

Small developers: the pressure is real

Large housebuilders have the financial depth and political leverage to weather cycles of reform. Small and medium-sized developers — who account for a meaningful share of diverse, community-scale housing output — are under considerably more pressure.

The cumulative burden of BNG, mandatory first homes requirements, fire safety provisions, nutrient neutrality mitigation, and rising infrastructure levy expectations has made marginal schemes increasingly unviable. REalyse data on active sales listings and recent transactions across mid-sized English towns illustrates the problem clearly: new-build asking prices in many secondary markets are approaching the ceiling of what local buyers can afford, while build costs have risen sharply since 2021.

Against that backdrop, the revised NPPF's more permissive approach to viability — including flagged reforms to threshold inputs — is a step in the right direction. But it will take time to filter through into assessable, fundable schemes.

The government's Platform4 initiative, targeting disused railway land in cities including Cambridge, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham, signals some awareness that small sites and brownfield plots need dedicated support mechanisms beyond the planning system itself. For self-build and custom-build operators, the reserved plots within these programmes represent a genuine, if modest, opportunity.

The approval-to-delivery pipeline: what the data says

Planning reform is a necessary condition for higher housing output. It is not a sufficient one.

Developers cite a familiar set of constraints beyond planning consent: a shortage of skilled construction labour, viability gaps on affordable housing contributions, grid connection delays for energy infrastructure, and a sales market that — while showing signs of recovery in early 2026 — remains sensitive to mortgage rate movements. UKREiiF 2026 sentiment data confirms the picture: positive sentiment across the property sector has declined from 69.5% in 2025 to 63.1% in 2026, even as legislative reform accelerates.

REalyse planning application data tracking scheme status from submission through to on-site commencement shows that the average lag between permission granted and construction start has lengthened in most English regions over the past two years. That gap — not the consenting process alone — is where housing output is currently being lost.

The revised Local Planning (England) Regulations 2026, now introducing new Local Plan timetabling requirements, will add further pressure on under-resourced planning departments. Where authorities cannot demonstrate a five-year housing land supply, applicants can challenge refusals more robustly — a provision that historically has driven speculative applications more than it has delivered genuinely planned communities.

Outlook: reform is necessary, but implementation will define success

The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 is, by any reasonable assessment, a significant step. The restoration of mandatory housing targets for local authorities, the return of strategic planning, the streamlining of consenting for major schemes, and the creation of environmental mitigation frameworks all address real, long-standing weaknesses.

But the OBR's revised completion forecasts — and the sector's own tempered optimism — should be read as a clear signal that legislation alone will not close the delivery gap. The real test in 2026 and beyond is implementation: whether EDP frameworks are funded and functional, whether CPO reforms accelerate site assembly, whether strategic planning bodies can agree cross-boundary allocations without years of legal attrition, and whether small developers receive the viability headroom they need to build at scale.

For property professionals, investors, and developers, REalyse planning and pipeline data offers an essential lens on how these reforms are translating into real activity across local markets — from approval rates and scheme status through to pricing dynamics in the transactions most affected by new housing supply. The direction of travel is right. The pace of delivery is the question that the rest of this parliament will have to answer.