ICE presidential roundtable: is the Planning and Infrastructure Bill enough, or just the start?

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, introduced to Parliament in March 2025, is a flagship legislative initiative from the government aimed at accelerating the delivery of housing and infrastructure across the UK.

The bill has progressed through multiple stages in both Houses, with its Committee Stage in the Lords completed in September 2025.

It forms a central part of the government’s broader Plan for Change, which includes ambitions to build 1.5 million homes and confirm 150 major infrastructure project decisions by the end of this Parliament.

The government’s pledge to ‘build, baby, build’ will, in large part, depend on whether planning decisions can be accelerated.

ICE President Jim Hall chaired a roundtable with Catherine Howard, who was recently appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ adviser on infrastructure planning.

Looking ahead to the Autumn Budget, the discussion provided a timely opportunity to reflect on whether the bill strikes the right balance between speed, certainty, and sustainability. The roundtable also looked at what further steps may be needed to realise its full potential.

Key points of discussion included:

• The overriding priority isn’t for more policy or legislation in the next phase of planning reform once the bill is passed. Rather, it’s culture change in the planning inspectorate and local and strategic authorities. There’s also a need to implement the policy instruments that are already available and bring together key decision-makers – including ministers – to speed up change.
• Planning is not an adequately attractive profession, and so capability and capacity are ongoing issues which slow down decision-making.
• Digitisation would provide a base on which to improve capability across the planning system, but industry and government aren’t working together closely enough on this priority area.