As 2025 draws to a close it is time to take stock of the past twelve months, but also to look to the future – and one milestone will stand out for CECA members and our industry as a whole. This week, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill received Royal Assent, and is now law as the Planning and Infrastructure Act.
For CECA members this moment matters. Legislative reform by itself will not pour concrete, install spoil, connect utilities, or deliver a Development Consent Order (DCO) that will create jobs and growth. But it can streamline the entire landscape of UK infrastructure and, crucially, improve certainty so clients and supply chains can invest with confidence.
CECA has consistently argued that the UK must move to a planning system that is predictable, proportionate, and timely. Delay inflates risk, increases cost, and undermines the very outcomes businesses and communities need: better transport links, secure water supplies, resilient energy networks, and the foundation of the built environment we all live in – the world-class infrastructure CECA members deliver.
The UK Government is explicit that the Act is intended to slash delays and costs, and to accelerate the delivery of homes and infrastructure, while presenting the legislation as a win-win for the environment and the economy.
The measures it highlights include a Nature Restoration Fund while Natural England implements environmental measures at scale; reforms to judicial review to limit repeated legal challenges that are without legal merit; modernising planning so that decision-making focuses on the most significant applications; giving powers to development corporations to speed up large-scale delivery of projects (including new towns); faster delivery of reservoirs, including bringing some schemes within the NSIP regime; speeding up grid connections; and rolling out spatial planning across multiple planning authorities to align infrastructure and housebuilding. The Government has also indicated that reforms will be implemented on a staged basis, with more detail to follow in the coming weeks and months. CECA will be keeping members informed at every stage of this process.
CECA’s position is that reform must reduce delay without undermining legitimacy. We have long campaigned for planning reforms that accelerate delivery without impacting democratic accountability or environmental outcomes. In our response earlier this year to the Government’s consultation on streamlining infrastructure planning, we supported reform to speed up and de-risk the NSIP consent regime while maintaining environmental safeguarding and set out practical recommendations to make the system faster and more efficient where time and resource is spent.
Our position is grounded in the view that the UK’s infrastructure planning regime has been subject to systemic drift: data shows that the typical timespan for DCOs has increased substantially over the last ten years, with delays particularly evident in certain sectors. The mind-boggling length of many planning documents that have emerged in this time is testament of a system mired in complexity.
CECA’s view is straightforward: if the UK is serious about economic growth, societal resilience, and net zero, then consenting and planning must be treated as enabling national capability and foundational to securing our economy for the future.
Royal Assent is a milestone: delivery is the test. From a contractor perspective, implementation of the Act must mean clear, usable guidance and disciplined scope in the NSIP process, so that examinations focus on what is genuinely decision-critical and schemes are not subject to unnecessary blockers. It should mean digital-by-default processes that reduce duplication, improve transparency, and truncate timelines. It must also mean resourcing the public bodies the system relies on to work – planning teams, inspectors, statutory consultees, local authorities, and other stakeholders – so that the clear intent of this legislation is not hamstrung by operational bottlenecks. It should mean a proportionate approach to challenges and risk that reduces delay while retaining proper and accountable routes for legitimate scrutiny. And above all, it must mean greater certainty of pipeline, including fair treatment of the supply chain – especially SMEs, who are the bedrock of our industry – so that businesses can invest in people, skills, and innovation with confidence.
CECA welcomes the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act as a major step in modernising how England and Wales plan for and consent nationally significant infrastructure. But we are clear-eyed about what comes next. To transform reform into outcomes, implementation must be rapid, practical, and properly resourced – and it must be shaped by the people who deliver projects on the ground. That CECA’s most recent Workload Trends Survey, published this week, recorded the first drop in our members’ workloads for five years, shows that there is not a moment to lose. We stand ready to work with our members, Government, Parliamentarians, industry partners, and all relevant stakeholders to ensure the new legislative framework accelerates infrastructure delivery and supports a healthy, productive supply chain that can invest for the long term. The UK Government has chosen to legislate for speed. Now it must govern for delivery.