Two major planning reforms have reshaped how significant development gets consented in England within the space of five months. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in December, sped up the national consenting regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects — energy, transport, and water schemes decided by the Secretary of State rather than the local council — by removing the statutory duty to consult before applying and unifying the process for changes to an approved consent. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which followed in April, created a new statutory tier of Mayoral Strategic Authorities with the power to call in “applications of potential strategic importance” from local planning committees, to issue Mayoral Development Orders, and to prepare Spatial Development Strategies that local plans must have regard to.
Both reforms serve the Government’s stated priorities of economic growth and devolution, and both were justified, in part, by the same argument: that decisions made at the most local tier of government are an obstacle to development the country needs at the pace it needs it. But growth and devolution pull in different directions at the exact point where the two reforms meet. Devolution, understood as moving power closer to the people affected by a decision, points toward the district or borough planning committee — the tier closest to the site of a proposed development, and the tier that both Acts, in different ways, now bypass. The mayoral call-in power satisfies the devolution agenda’s ambition to strengthen city-region government, but does so by removing authority from a more local, and no less democratically elected, tier beneath it.
With devolution strategy now led from a dedicated function reporting to the Prime Minister and separate from the department responsible for day-to-day planning policy, the practical question facing officials is how far the strategic and national consenting tiers should be extended further into decisions currently made locally — and what, if anything, should be done to protect the local tier’s role as those tiers expand. This submission sets out that choice for decision.
Ministerial submission
To: The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
Issue
- The Government’s growth and devolution priorities have, within the same parliamentary session, each altered the planning consent process by the same underlying mechanism: moving authority to determine significant development away from the local planning authority that would otherwise decide it. This submission concerns whether, and how far, that displacement should be extended further as the Department considers the next phase of planning reform, and what safeguards, if any, should accompany any further extension.
Background
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Since the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, most development in England has been determined by the local planning authority in whose area it falls — typically a district, borough, or unitary council acting through an elected planning committee. The Planning Act 2008 created an exception for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) — large energy, transport, water, and waste schemes above defined thresholds — which are instead examined by the Planning Inspectorate and decided by the relevant Secretary of State through a Development Consent Order, with no role for the local planning authority beyond consultation.
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The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, reformed the NSIP regime to speed up consenting. It replaced the statutory duty to consult specified bodies before applying for a Development Consent Order with a duty merely to notify them, removed the distinction between material and non-material changes to a granted consent in favour of a single unified process, and introduced a faster procedure for legal challenges. Government estimated these changes would reduce average NSIP consenting time by approximately twelve months. Several provisions took effect on Royal Assent; others remain subject to commencement order.
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The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, took a different route to a related end. It placed Strategic Authorities — combined authorities, combined county authorities, and the Greater London Authority, in foundation, mayoral, or established mayoral form — on a statutory footing across England, and gave mayoral Strategic Authorities a power to call in applications of “potential strategic importance” from the local planning authority in which they fall, either directing refusal or determining the application themselves; a power to make Mayoral Development Orders; and a duty to prepare a Spatial Development Strategy to which local plans must have regard. Coverage of England by mayoral Strategic Authorities remains partial: some areas have a foundation-status authority without call-in powers, and a residual minority have no Strategic Authority at all — a specific instance of the non-devolved English regions problem set out in the structural-problems digest.
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Both Acts respond to a shared diagnosis — that local planning determination is a principal source of delay in the delivery of development the country needs — but by different mechanisms and to different destinations: the 2025 Act moves determination to Whitehall for a defined category of national infrastructure; the 2026 Act moves it to a regional mayor for a broader, discretionary category of “strategic” development. Housing delivery remains under particular pressure: the manifesto commitment to 1.5 million net additional homes over the Parliament is broadly acknowledged, including within the Department, to require a faster and more predictable route to consent than the current local-plan-led system reliably provides.
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Devolution strategy is no longer led from this Department. Following the Prime Minister’s description of his ambition as “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen,” responsibility for local economic growth and devolution strategy has moved to a dedicated function under the First Secretary of State, Louise Haigh, operating in part from a new office in Manchester and drawing staff previously based in this Department and in HM Treasury. This Department retains operational responsibility for planning policy and the day-to-day consenting system, including any further reform of the kind considered in this submission. Officials should treat the question below as sitting at the unresolved seam between those two ministerial mandates, and are advised to clear the preferred option informally with the First Secretary of State’s team before this submission proceeds to write-round.
The General Case
- The case for extending strategic or national consenting further rests on three grounds:
- (a) both Acts, on the Department’s own estimates, demonstrate that displacing local determination measurably speeds delivery; the housing and infrastructure targets against which the Government will be judged are not achieved by leaving that lesson unapplied to schemes not yet covered by either reform;
- (b) investment in large-scale housing and infrastructure is sensitive to the risk of contested local determination; a clearer or wider basis for escalation to the strategic or national tier reduces the risk premium developers and financiers attach to schemes that might otherwise face a lengthy and uncertain local process;
- (c) climate and energy commitments, in particular grid and generation capacity, require a build rate that the ordinary local committee cycle has not historically delivered at the scale or pace required.
- The case against further extension rests on three grounds:
- (a) the local planning committee is, for most residents, the only point at which a specific development decision affecting their immediate area can be directly influenced; two displacements of that authority within five months, before either has been evaluated in practice, risk a cumulative loss of local democratic input not offset by any clearly articulated alternative channel;
- (b) the mayoral call-in power is untested: officials are not aware of it having yet been exercised, and building further reform, whether extension or restriction, on a mechanism not yet tested by use, legal challenge, or judicial review risks getting the design wrong twice rather than once;
- (c) each further transfer of determination away from the local planning authority increases the risk that the planning system as a whole comes to be perceived as designed to override local objection whenever it proves inconvenient — a perception that, if it takes hold, could weaken public consent for the growth and devolution agendas both reforms were intended to serve.
Options
Option A: Allow the 2025 and 2026 Acts to bed in before further reform
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Under this option, no further primary legislation or statutory guidance is brought forward in this area. The Department completes the outstanding commencement of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and supports Strategic Authorities in establishing the mayoral call-in and Spatial Development Strategy functions created by the 2026 Act, and commissions a formal post-implementation review of both, reporting within two to three years, before considering whether the strategic or national tier should be extended, narrowed, or bounded.
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For:
- (a) neither Act has been in force long enough to generate a usable evidence base; several NSIP provisions remain uncommenced and the mayoral call-in power has, to officials’ knowledge, not yet been exercised;
- (b) avoids a third round of statutory change for local planning authorities, Strategic Authorities, and developers still adapting to the first two;
- (c) preserves the Department’s options: a formal review builds the evidence base that would support either extension (Option B or D) or safeguards (Option C), whichever the evidence favours.
- Against:
- (a) does not address the immediate pressure of housing and infrastructure delivery targets, which are not paused pending review;
- (b) risks being read, at the political level, as inertia at the precise moment the Prime Minister has identified devolution and growth as the defining projects of his premiership;
- (c) leaves Strategic Authorities to interpret the undefined “potential strategic importance” test without further central guidance in the meantime, a gap that inaction does nothing to close.
Option B: Extend fast-track and strategic consenting further
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Under this option, the Department lowers the qualifying thresholds for NSIP treatment for one or more categories of development (for example, grid infrastructure, large energy storage, or data centres), and issues statutory guidance encouraging mayoral Strategic Authorities to interpret “potential strategic importance” broadly, alongside a statutory presumption that an adopted Spatial Development Strategy takes precedence over a conflicting local plan.
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For:
- (a) most directly serves the growth mission and the manifesto housing target, by extending to the widest practicable range of significant schemes the delay-reduction already demonstrated for NSIPs and, on the Department’s working assumption, for mayoral call-ins;
- (b) is incremental rather than a new departure, extending the direction Parliament has already endorsed twice within the same session rather than reopening it;
- (c) reinforces rather than undercuts the devolution agenda, since in most cases the additional power accrues to the mayoral Strategic Authority rather than to Whitehall.
- Against:
- (a) extends precisely the displacement of local planning authority identified in paragraph 8 as a risk, without any of the safeguards considered in Option C, and does so before the first tranche of reform has been tested in practice;
- (b) broadening or leaving undefined the “potential strategic importance” test invites judicial review of individual call-in decisions, which the Strategic Authority, rather than central government, would bear the primary cost and delay of defending;
- (c) widens the practical gap between the minority of England with an established mayoral Strategic Authority and the areas with foundation-status or no Strategic Authority at all, extending the new fast-track route unevenly across the country.
Option C: Introduce statutory safeguards for local planning authority
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Under this option, the Department legislates, or issues statutory guidance under existing powers, to bound the mayoral call-in power and the NSIP notification regime with safeguards for local input: a published, narrow list of criteria defining “potential strategic importance”; a right for the local planning authority to make representations to the Planning Inspectorate, rather than to the mayor alone, before a call-in decision is finalised; and a sunset clause requiring Parliament to reaffirm the mayoral call-in power after five years.
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For:
- (a) directly answers the legitimacy risk identified in paragraph 8(c), without reversing either the 2025 or the 2026 Act;
- (b) a narrower, published criteria set gives developers and local planning authorities more predictability than the current open-textured test, which may in practice reduce rather than increase disputes about jurisdiction;
- (c) protects the credibility of the devolution agenda specifically, by ensuring that power moved from Whitehall to a Strategic Authority is not, through the same instrument, moved away from the local planning authorities that the wider devolution programme otherwise seeks to strengthen.
- Against:
- (a) additional procedural steps, however safeguard-focused, risk reintroducing some of the delay both Acts were designed to remove, working against the growth mission at the margin;
- (b) legislating so soon after Royal Assent of the 2026 Act invites the charge that the Government is unpicking its own flagship devolution legislation before it has taken effect;
- (c) a five-year sunset clause creates a recurring point of legislative uncertainty for Strategic Authorities and developers planning schemes that anticipate needing the call-in route, which may depress investment in the interim.
Option D: A bounded, published schedule of strategic-tier categories
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Under this option, the open “potential strategic importance” test is replaced with a defined, published schedule of development categories and scale thresholds that qualify for mayoral call-in or national fast-track treatment, modelled on the NSIP thresholds set under the Planning Act 2008, and reviewable periodically by statutory instrument rather than by case-by-case discretion.
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For:
- (a) combines the predictability sought under Option C with the clarity that would support extension under Option B, without requiring a binary choice between safeguarding and extending;
- (b) a published schedule is more straightforward for local planning authorities, Strategic Authorities, and developers to plan against than a discretionary test, and the NSIP schedule model has eighteen years of operating precedent to draw on;
- (c) removes the mayor’s individual judgement from the initial jurisdictional question, reducing, though not eliminating, the perception that call-in decisions are made on a discretionary or political basis.
- Against:
- (a) a fixed schedule is inherently less flexible than discretionary call-in: a genuinely strategic scheme falling just outside the schedule’s thresholds would default to ordinary local determination with no mechanism for escalation;
- (b) designing the schedule and its review process requires primary legislation and a dedicated consultation exercise, extending the period before any of the option’s intended benefits are realised, beyond what Option B could achieve through guidance alone;
- (c) periodic review by statutory instrument still concentrates the power to redraw the boundary of local authority in the hands of the Secretary of State laying the instrument, which relocates rather than resolves the underlying tension between the growth and devolution agendas identified at paragraph 5.
Resource and Cost Implications
- Option A incurs the cost of a formal post-implementation review, modest relative to the other options, funded from the Department’s existing evaluation budget. Option B requires secondary legislation to adjust NSIP thresholds and additional capacity within mayoral Strategic Authorities to handle an expanded call-in caseload, met in the first instance from existing Strategic Authority core funding with the risk of a further ask at the next Spending Review. Option C requires primary legislation to create the Planning Inspectorate representation right and recurring administrative cost to operate the sunset review, together with additional Planning Inspectorate caseworker capacity. Option D requires primary legislation and a dedicated schedule-design exercise, likely the most resource-intensive option in the near term, offset over time by reduced litigation and jurisdictional dispute costs once the schedule is in operation.
Legal and Devolution Considerations
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Town and country planning is devolved to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland; the Strategic Authority reforms under the 2026 Act, and any extension considered under Options B to D, apply to England only. The NSIP regime under the Planning Act 2008 already extends to defined categories of energy infrastructure in Wales, reflecting the reservation of energy policy above devolved thresholds; any adjustment to NSIP categories or thresholds under Option B would need to specify clearly which changes apply in Wales and engage the Welsh Government accordingly. No option is proposed to extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland, where planning consent for equivalent development is a matter for the devolved administrations.
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Options B and D engage Article 6 ECHR (right to a fair hearing) for parties objecting to development, given the reduced role of independent examination as more categories move to call-in or schedule-based fast-track treatment; Option C’s Planning Inspectorate representation right is, in part, a response to this risk. Compulsory purchase powers exercised in connection with NSIPs engage Article 1 Protocol 1 ECHR (protection of property); the existing compensation code is considered to provide adequate safeguard and is not disturbed by any option considered here.
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This submission sits within the devolution-versus-local-democracy problem set out in the structural-problems digest: each option other than Option A moves authority toward a regional or national tier justified in part as devolution from Whitehall, while simultaneously moving it away from the local planning authority beneath that tier. Officials preparing further advice on this subject should state explicitly, for each option, which tier of government gains authority and which tier loses it, rather than relying on “devolution” as a single, undifferentiated justification.
Requested direction
- Ministers are invited to indicate whether further reform of the strategic and national consenting tiers should await the evidence from post-implementation review of the 2025 and 2026 Acts (Option A); proceed now by extending fast-track and strategic consenting further (Option B); proceed now by introducing statutory safeguards for local planning authority within the existing settlement (Option C); or proceed now by replacing discretionary call-in with a bounded, published schedule (Option D); and, given the shared interest identified at paragraph 6, whether the preferred option should be agreed jointly with the First Secretary of State before proceeding to collective agreement.