As of December 2025, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill has completed its stages in the House of Lords and has returned to the Commons for consideration of the Lords’ amendments before Royal Assent. In this article, we share a summary of the current draft Bill and some of its implications for SME developers and investors.

Planning Committee Reforms
Planning committees are a critical part of the planning system. In England planning decisions by LPAs are the responsibility of planning committees, although they can delegate decisions to officers.

The Bill will include introducing a national scheme of delegation that will, through regulations, set out which planning functions should be delegated to planning officers for a decision and which should go instead to a planning committee or subcommittee. Hopefully, this will bring greater consistency and certainty to the path of applications, but this is subject to any residual discretion that may be embedded into the new scheme.

Regulations will also set out limits for the size of committees, to support effective debate and avoid sprawling committees. As a result of this legislation, committee members will be required to undertake mandatory training before they can take planning decisions. Although this is welcome in principle, this will not necessarily avoid the ‘politicisation’ of planning decisions in some cases that can lead to ill-conceived refusals and the possible need to appeal or resubmit.

Sub-delegation of Planning Fees
Over the years there have been calls from local authorities for planning fees to be set at a level that fully covers the cost of the application service. Similarly, many developers have indicated an interest in paying more for planning applications if it would lead to a better service; e.g. many more developers use ‘Planning Performance Agreements’ to pay for a ‘priority service’.