Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025: What Developers Need to Know
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and a revised NPPF signal a significant shift in how development proposals are assessed and delivered in England. From new plan-making rules to the Building Safety Levy, developers who get ahead of these changes now will be better placed to protect margins and programme.
A cluster of planning and building regulations changes is landing between now and late 2026, each capable of affecting development viability, programme, and legal risk in its own right. Taken together, they represent the most significant shift in the English planning framework for several years. The good news is that most of these changes are known well in advance, which means developers who act now have a real advantage over those who wait for the dust to settle.
A New NPPF and a Pro-Growth Policy Direction
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 received Royal Assent in December 2025 and triggered a fresh round of consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework. The government's direction of travel is clear: housing delivery and economic growth are the priorities. The revised NPPF places greater weight on meeting housing need and makes it materially harder for local authorities to refuse proposals in areas where the local plan is out of date.
For developers, this is relevant in two ways. First, if you are promoting sites in authorities without an up-to-date plan, the policy environment is more favourable than it has been for some time. Second, the final NPPF wording is not yet settled, so monitoring the consultation and understanding how the confirmed text differs from earlier drafts is essential before you commit to a planning strategy on a particular site.
The New Plan-Making System: Practical Changes From March 2026
From 25 March 2026, local authorities moved onto the new plan-making system introduced by the Act. One immediate practical change is that councils can now progress applications even when certain consultees have not responded within the statutory period. This is designed to remove one of the more frustrating sources of delay, but it also means that developers and their agents need to keep a close eye on consultee responses rather than assuming silence means no objection.
Engaging early with local authority planning teams under the new system is more important than ever. Pre-application discussions allow you to understand how a particular authority is applying the new framework, what weight they are placing on emerging local plan policies, and where the pressure points are likely to be.
Biodiversity Net Gain: Extended to Infrastructure Projects
Mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain, requiring a minimum 10% net increase in biodiversity value, already applies to most planning permissions in England. From May 2026, it extends to Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects. The rules also introduce tighter verification requirements for off-site biodiversity units, meaning that the practice of securing credits from distant or poorly evidenced habitats is becoming harder to rely on.
If your appraisals still treat BNG as a residual cost to be sorted out later, now is the time to revisit them. The cost of on-site habitat creation, off-site unit procurement, and the 30-year management obligations attached to both should be quantified at the earliest stage of site assessment. BNG is no longer a planning condition to manage at the back end of a project; it is a land value and programme issue from day one.
Building Safety Levy: A New Line in Your Appraisal From October 2026
The Building Safety Levy comes into force in October 2026 and applies to residential developments of ten or more dwellings. It is a charge on development, not on the end buyer, and it will need to appear as a cost line in every viability appraisal for schemes that fall within scope. The levy is designed to fund remediation of unsafe buildings and is separate from any s106 or Community Infrastructure Levy obligations.
The rates have not been finalised at the time of writing, so speak to your quantity surveyor and legal team about building a reasonable contingency into appraisals now. Schemes currently in the early feasibility stage should be stress-tested against a range of levy levels to understand how sensitive the land value is to this new cost.
Future Homes Standard: Carbon Targets Tighten in 2026
The Future Homes Standard, coming into force in 2026, requires new homes to emit 75 to 80 per cent less carbon than homes built to previous regulations. In practice, this means moving away from gas boilers and specifying higher-performance fabric, ventilation, and heating systems as standard. The capital cost implications vary by typology and location, but they are material, particularly for higher-density flatted schemes where heat pump installation is more complex.
Work with your technical team to understand the specification uplift required on current and pipeline projects. Local authority planners and building control officers are also getting to grips with the new standard, so early technical engagement will help avoid abortive design work.
Practical Takeaways
Engage planning teams early under the new plan-making system to understand how your authority is applying the revised NPPF.
Cost BNG properly at feasibility stage, including off-site units, management obligations, and verification costs.
Model the Building Safety Levy in appraisals now, even before final rates are confirmed, and stress-test land values accordingly.
Instruct your solicitor at heads of terms stage, not after exchange, so that legal due diligence keeps pace with policy risk on each site.
Monitor the NPPF consultation for final policy wording before locking in a planning strategy.
None of these changes should be cause for alarm, but each one has a cost, a programme implication, or a legal dimension that rewards early attention. Developers who build these factors into their processes now will be better placed to move quickly when the right opportunities arise.
About this article: written by the Agreed team. We publish honest, hands-on guides on UK property based on what our associates and developer partners are actually doing day-to-day. Spot something out of date or wrong? Tell us via the contact page.