What did the King’s Speech promise for planning?

The King’s Speech – formally known as the Speech from the Throne –  is a much-awaited event that is delivered at the State Opening of Parliament, marking the start of the parliamentary year. In this speech, the UK monarch sets out the government’s priorities for the months ahead

This year, following the Labour Party’s landslide election win and record losses for the Tories, King Charles’s opening speech was more highly anticipated than ever before.

But what insights did the Speech deliver about Labour’s priorities for planning law? Our summary will provide the highlights.

What can we expect from the new Labour government?

The Labour Party’s planning priorities were separated into immediate and longer-term goals, as follows:

Immediate priorities for before the summer recess:

1. Angela Rayner, the new Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Houses and Communities, is expected to deliver a revised draft of the National Planning Policy Framework, reinstating mandatory housing targets for local authorities across England and revoking the previous government’s updates in 2023. The revised draft will also reform and strengthen the presumption in favour of sustainable development.
2. Ms Rayner will also introduce a new housebuilding programme to support the government’s target of building 1.5 million new homes across the next Parliament.
3. She is also expected to ask local authorities to begin regularly reviewing their green belt boundaries with a view to releasing more ‘grey belt’ land for development.
4. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has pledged to reverse the de facto ban on onshore wind farms.

Longer term priorities:

Housing and planning

• Labour has committed to building 300,000 homes per year over the next parliament.
• A Planning and Infrastructure Bill will propose bold steps to overhaul the UK planning system and address the country’s urgent housebuilding and infrastructure needs. Among the Bill’s key provisions:
  • Simplified approval process for significant infrastructure schemes, removing some of the red tape that currently causes delays
  • Modernised planning committees to facilitate quicker decision-making
  • Reforming the rules for compulsory purchase compensation to ensure that compensation to landowners for compulsory purchase orders is fair but not excessive
  • Use of development to fund nature recovery where both are currently stalled, delivering positive environmental outcomes.
• New developments will be required to provide a higher proportion of affordable housing, with a ‘gold standard’ target of 40%.
• Labour will prioritise brownfield development and fast-track the approval of urban brownfield sites.

Local decision-making

• An English Devolution Bill is set to move power out of Westminster and give local leaders greater strategic planning powers. This will include:
  • Enhanced powers of strategic planning, local transport networks, skills and employment support
  • Making devolution the ‘default setting’ so that local leaders can be granted powers without the need to negotiate agreements
  • Empowering local communities with a strong new ‘right to buy’ for valued community assets such as empty shops and pubs
• 300 new planning officers will be appointed
• Local Growth Plans will be a statutory requirement for local governments, with tough sanctions for those who fail to keep their LGPs updated.

Thus far, we only have high-level information about the contents of the two main planning-related Bills mentioned in the King’s Speech. Our Planning department will be keeping a close eye on any developments and will report back in more detail once this has been released.

In the meantime, we remain ready to support you with any planning queries you may have.