The Planning and Infrastructure Act – CalComms' Conservative perspective

At CalComms we are unashamedly political, with all of us being involved in politics and activism both at work and outside of the office. As the Planning and Infrastructure Bill becomes law, different members of the team give their viewpoint. Here, Managing Director Antony Calvert gives us a Conservative perspective.

There is definitely a whiff of panic in this Bill. The government has attached huge political credibility on delivering 1.5million new homes by the end of the parliament. The news that 2025 was the worst year for housebuilding completions in over a decade (excluding the Covid blip), with London being especially poor (not a good sign, given we’ve had a Labour mayor in the capital since 2016) there is clearly a measure of concern at Number 10.

It doesn’t do much to address the need to stimulate demand in house buying. That will only come with a strong economy and falling unemployment. Something we are seeing the reverse of.

This is reflected in a Bill which provides some pretty significant transfers of power away from locally elected planning committees and towards the bureaucrats in the back office. Now I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with minor applications being determined by officers, but the interference in larger applications will cause distress. Indeed the Local Government Association, currently run by the controlling Labour Group, have made this very same point.

One area I am encouraged by is with the speeding up of energy connections to the Grid, and that local residents living near large new green infrastructure projects, such as onshore wind and large solar farms, will share in the economic benefits these important projects will bring.

At CalComms we work with responsible developers of Net Zero infrastructure who already do this on a voluntary and wholly discretionary basis. It is nice to see the rest of the country catching up!

Another area I personally welcome is one aspect we have been lobbying governments of successive colours for some considerable time now; addressing the crisis in resourcing planning departments. It is a crying shame that councillors, when faced with the need to make efficiency savings to their authorities, always seem to chose planning departments in the back office for cuts. Surely by having a better resourced planning department you can see more applications consented, which pump primed your local economy leading to greater revenue growth?

The government has recognised this in the Bill. Though my concerns with allowing LPAs to charge whatever fees they want could hurt SME developers. The FTSE100s and 350s won’t be affected at all, and funds / land promoters will just snip the cost off their land values. But viability is far more precarious for smaller and regional developers. CalComms works with a number of them and we will be keeping a very close eye on how local council’s choose to wield these new fee-raising powers.

But at the end of the parliament will we look back at this Bill and the imminent changes they will bring to the NPPF and say that it was the catalyst for 1.5million new homes?

Somehow my scepticism remains!