The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026 were made on 6 July 2026 and come into force on 16 July 2026. The instrument was approved by both Houses of Parliament under the procedure set out in section 58(7) of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, and was signed by Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, acting by authority of the Secretary of State. This is a short statutory instrument, but it performs a necessary legal function. Rather than creating a new planning policy, it adjusts existing legislation so that the strategic planning framework introduced by the 2025 Act can operate as intended.
The amendments are consequential on Part 1A of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, inserted by section 58 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. That new Part requires strategic planning authorities to prepare a document called a spatial development strategy. In practical terms, the instrument is part of the legal housekeeping around that new duty. It updates older Acts so that the examination of spatial development strategies, and their relationship with marine planning, are properly reflected in the statute book before the new arrangements bed in.
Regulation 2 amends section 114 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The drafting change is small, but its effect is important: the examination provisions in section 114 are extended so that they apply to a spatial development strategy under Part 1A. The Explanatory Note states that this means an examination of a spatial development strategy will count as a statutory inquiry for the purposes of the Tribunal and Inquiries Act 1992. The immediate consequence is procedural clarity. It allows the Lord Chancellor to make rules governing how those examinations are run, which matters for any authority preparing a strategy and for any participant expected to engage with the examination process.
Regulation 3 makes a separate amendment to Schedule 6 to the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. It adds a new notification requirement where a marine plan authority decides to prepare a marine plan. In those cases, the authority must notify any strategic planning authority, as defined by section 12A of the 2004 Act, that is required to prepare a spatial development strategy for an area adjoining or adjacent to the marine plan area. That change is aimed at coordination between land-use strategy and marine planning. For coastal and near-coastal areas, the preparation of a spatial development strategy and the preparation of a marine plan can affect the same broad geography. Earlier notification should reduce the risk of parallel planning work proceeding in isolation.
The instrument extends to England and Wales, although the policy background is the strategic planning regime introduced through the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. Its operational effect is therefore best understood as part of the wider implementation of that Act, rather than as a standalone reform package. For local authorities and other public bodies, the main point is that the regulations do not change the substance of planning policy tests or create new development control powers. They deal with process, legal status and inter-authority communication. Even so, those procedural points can shape how quickly strategies move through examination and how effectively neighbouring planning systems exchange information.
The Government states in the Explanatory Note that no full impact assessment has been produced because no, or no significant, effect on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. Instead, ministers point back to the impact assessment prepared for the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. That assessment of impact fits the narrow scope of the instrument, but the administrative significance should not be dismissed. By 16 July 2026, strategic planning authorities preparing spatial development strategies will have a clearer statutory route for examination, and marine plan authorities will face an express duty to notify adjoining strategic planning authorities at the start of plan preparation. For a technical instrument, that is a material step in making the post-2025 planning framework workable.