The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is the Government’s legislative attempt to prioritise England’s pressing need for critical infrastructure, such as housing, electricity and public transport networks. First introduced to Parliament in March 2025, the Bill’s central aim is to streamline the development process for infrastructure projects. This ambition is fundamentally intertwined with the Government’s headline pledge to build 1.5m new homes by the end of its term in 2029. But while the housing and infrastructure focus grabs headlines, the Bill’s reach extends much further. Its provisions will have ripple effects for environmental groups, local authorities, legal teams, and heritage organisations alike.
National heritage contributes to the country’s economy (England’s heritage sector is estimated to have contributed £44.9bn to the UK economy in 2022), social well-being, and sense of identity. It attracts visitors, generates jobs, and provides valuable spaces for businesses and communities. Heritage, in many ways, holds tangible economic benefits and an equally important sense of place and civic pride.
At first glance, the Bill presents itself as a bold, practical fix to the nation’s affordable housing problem – the underlying belief is that cutting red tape in the planning system will slash delivery times for infrastructure projects and new housing.
The legislative detail backs this up. The Bill proposes measures to accelerate development by reducing the scope for legal challenges to major infrastructure projects, allowing local planning authorities to set and ring-fence reasonable planning fees. This would enable more decisions to be delegated to officers in line with local plans. Heritage organisations have cautiously welcomed these steps, seeing them as a chance to simplify processes, improve planning performance, and clear long-standing bottlenecks that often delay heritage-related decisions.
Additionally, the P&I Bill updates development corporation powers, extending their remit to urban extensions and permitting mayoral development corporations to work on greenfield land. In theory, this would give mayors more practical levers to shape local development in line with their strategic vision.
From a heritage perspective, there is definitely room for reforms to progress from good to great. This could be achieved by bringing into operation the long-overdue provisions of the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2024, which require local authorities to provide heritage services underpinned by a Historic Environment Record (HER). Implementing this statutory requirement would mean better data could reduce uncertainty, help decision-makers balance heritage protection with development needs, and ultimately make the planning process faster, simpler, and more informed.
However, not all the proposals have been met with enthusiasm. Clause 37 of the Bill, for example, would allow the disapplication of heritage regimes for certain infrastructure projects. In practice, this appears to remove the Secretary of State’s right and duty to weigh heritage considerations when determining any project made under an order issued via the Transport and Works Act 1992, thus bypassing the requirement to reach a balanced judgment between development needs and heritage protection. The Institute of Historic Building Conservation voiced concern that that this shift could relegate heritage concerns to an afterthought, undermining the Town and Country Planning Act and associated heritage protections. As a result, it could pave the way for the demolition or alteration of listed buildings or those in conservation areas without the usual public scrutiny or consideration of their historic value.
This Bill also lands alongside other significant changes to the planning landscape, including the December 2024 revision of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF24) and the introduction of the ‘Grey Belt’ category within Green Belt policy. While the heritage-related paragraphs in Chapter 16 of the NPPF remain unchanged, new weight is being placed on public benefits such as housing delivery, renewable energy, and brownfield regeneration. In practice, this could shift the balance in cases where harm to heritage must be weighed against wider development priorities, meaning some sites previously deemed unsuitable could now be reconsidered.
Another flashpoint is Clause 44, which allows local planning authorities to set their own fees for planning applications and related planning functions. This could include introducing fees for Listed Building Consent, which would effectively charge property owners to carry out works they are legally obliged to undertake in the public interest. While some planning authorities favour fees to recover costs, Historic England and the IHBC argue this risks discouraging engagement, potentially leading to more unauthorised works.
The Bill is also part of a broader Government move to slim down statutory consultation requirements. Organisations like Theatres Trust and the Gardens Trust could lose their Statutory Consultee status, reducing formal input on heritage-related planning decisions. While they could still comment voluntarily, their views would carry less formal weight, potentially speeding up decisions at the cost of heritage scrutiny.
The Bill also seeks to reshape environmental regulation through standardised Environmental Delivery Plans and a Nature Restoration Fund. Developers would pay a one-off ‘levy’ to offset environmental harm, which Natural England would use to deliver restoration projects. During the second reading of the Bill, the Government framed this as a pragmatic win-win for nature and development. However, environmental groups, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, have warned that Part 3 of the Bill undermines key safeguards such as the precautionary principle and mitigation hierarchy, dubbing it as a “licence to destroy nature.”
Here, there is also a wider point about the link between nature and heritage. The restoration of historic landscapes, many of which are deeply intertwined with biodiversity, can deliver both cultural and ecological gains. If the Nature Restoration Fund explicitly included the repair and management of historic parks, gardens, and landscapes, it could strengthen the case for integration rather than treating heritage and environmental protection as separate silos.
Part 3 of the Bill’s success hinges on Natural England’s capacity to deliver meaningful projects, something questioned given resource constraints and the need to balance delivery with environmental oversight. Furthermore, instead of detailed, site-specific assessments, the Bill would allow an informal estimation of harm and a corresponding tariff. The new “overall improvement test” meant to guide this process is vague, open to interpretation, and ultimately subject to the Secretary of State’s discretion.
Following lobbying from NGOs and the Office for Environmental Protection, the Government tabled changes on 17 July 2025, making some concessions to improve wildlife safeguarding. Concerns remain that the approach could normalise offsetting rather than harm avoidance.
Ultimately, heritage, when understood as an enabler rather than an obstacle, can sit comfortably alongside sustainable growth. The Government’s goal should be to ensure that the P&I Bill’s planning reforms work in harmony to deliver homes and infrastructure while safeguarding what makes places unique. This is not, in any way, an argument against affordable housing because addressing the housing crisis is essential. Rather, the point is that housing delivery should not come at the expense of the historic and natural environments that underpin community identity, economic value, and long-term sustainability.
The real challenge for the P&I Bill will be finding that balance: enabling speed and certainty in planning without sacrificing heritage and landscapes for future generations.