According to the government's 3 July 2026 announcement, the Planning and Infrastructure Act will change the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime from 24 July. Mandatory pre-application consultation will be removed for NSIPs, the planning route used for large energy, transport, water and other strategic schemes that require Development Consent Orders. Ministers say the change is designed to bring forward construction of wind and solar farms, nuclear plants, reservoirs and transport links by shortening the process before an application is submitted. The government's estimate is that developers could save up to 12 months at the front end of a project, with savings to industry of around £1 billion over this Parliament.
The key policy shift is not the removal of engagement altogether, but the removal of a fixed statutory consultation stage. In its place, the government's consultation response says developers will receive earlier technical support and more direct advice from the Planning Inspectorate before an application is lodged. That transfers more weight to application quality and issue resolution before submission. According to the announcement, more than 80 prospective applicants have already used the Inspectorate's new pre-application service, which ministers say will help schemes enter examination with fewer unresolved technical points.
The government also wants examinations to be narrower and more disciplined. Its consultation response points to earlier Local Impact Reports from councils, including draft reports, and stronger use of Initial Assessments of Principal Issues so Examining Authorities identify the main areas for scrutiny sooner. For practitioners, that is a material procedural change. Local authorities, statutory consultees and applicants will face stronger pressure to present evidence earlier, while examining authorities are being asked to focus hearings and written questions on the points that genuinely affect a recommendation to ministers.
The reform sits inside a wider target to increase the number of major decisions taken through the NSIP system. The government says 41 decisions on major infrastructure have been made since it took office, including Mona Offshore Wind Farm, Gate Burton Energy Park and the Lower Thames Crossing. It also says 21 decisions were taken in the first year of this Parliament, which it describes as a record annual total. Ministers are now aiming for at least 150 major economic infrastructure decisions over the Parliament. On the government's figures, that would be close to three times the 59 Development Consent Order decisions made in the previous Parliament and above the 138 NSIP decisions recorded since 2011.
Ministers are linking those decisions to wider economic and energy outcomes. The government says green-lit projects could support more than 82,000 jobs and produce additional clean power for millions of homes and businesses each year. Steve Reed, the Housing Secretary, has presented the reforms as a way to get construction started sooner, while Energy Minister Michael Shanks has tied faster consents to energy security and reduced exposure to fossil fuel price shocks. That framing matters because it places planning reform inside the government's growth and clean power agenda. It suggests continued ministerial pressure for shorter timetables not only on departments, but also on agencies, inspectors and local bodies involved in the consent process.
A second strand of the package concerns legal challenge and route selection. The government says the new limits on claims classed as 'totally without merit' were recently tested in the Stonestreet Green Solar case, where the court dismissed a challenge at speed and avoided months of further delay to a project expected to power around 42,000 homes. Data centres are also being drawn more firmly into the national regime. Ministers have already directed three proposals into the NSIP process at Wapseys Wood in Buckinghamshire, Ampthill Road in Bedford and New Barn Lane in Dartford, allowing those schemes to seek a centralised decision on fixed statutory timetables rather than relying only on local planning routes.
Implementation will depend heavily on capacity in the system. Local authorities can now set their own fees to recover the cost of NSIP work, and the government is assessing applications submitted under Round 3 of the Innovation and Capacity Fund, which offered up to £1 million to support council engagement. The Planning Inspectorate says East West Rail is among the first schemes to use the more structured pre-application service, and David Price, head of its Infrastructure Decisions and Applications Service, has said the organisation is ready to apply the new model. The government also points to 20 recommendations from Examining Authorities on NSIPs last year, an 18 per cent increase on the previous year, alongside cases processed faster than statutory maximum periods. It says a further £2.2 million has been provided since 2024 to recruit more inspectors, building on £48 million committed last year to planning capacity across the public sector and around 1,400 recruitments this Parliament.
A parallel change reaches beyond the NSIP regime itself. Mandatory pre-application consultation is also being removed for onshore wind schemes that still proceed under the Town and Country Planning Act, including projects up to 100MW that remain with local planning authorities rather than moving to the centralised Development Consent Order system. According to the announcement, this will be the first time since 2015 that those schemes have been free from that statutory requirement. For developers, the immediate effect is a shorter and less formal front-end process from 24 July. For councils and communities, the practical question is whether earlier technical engagement, earlier Local Impact Reports and tighter examination scoping will preserve meaningful scrutiny once the statutory consultation step disappears. Further guidance is due before commencement, supplementing the implementation plan published earlier this year. The government says the wider Planning and Infrastructure Act could add up to £7.5 billion to the economy over the next decade, but the operational test will be whether speed is achieved without weakening the quality of local evidence or the resilience of decisions to challenge.