England planning rules extend protection to Ramsar sites

On 20 May 2026, the Government made the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026. The key date for you is 21 May 2026, because the regulations say most of Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the 2025 Act came into force the day after they were made, with paragraph 14(2) left out for now. If that sounds dry, we can translate it simply: a commencement regulation is the legal switch that turns part of an Act on. The legislation.gov.uk text also shows this was signed by Minister of State Matthew Pennycook, so this is not a proposal or a consultation. It is law that has now started to operate.

The change itself sits inside environmental planning law. The explanatory note says Part 1 of Schedule 5 amends the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 so that the protections in Part 6 now extend to Ramsar sites in England. Ramsar sites are wetlands recognised as internationally important under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, signed at Ramsar on 2 February 1971. In plain English, these are places such as marshes, estuaries, fens and other water-rich habitats that matter far beyond a local boundary, especially for wildlife.

The biggest practical shift is this: the new rules create a statutory requirement for Ramsar sites to be treated in the same way as European sites when assessments are carried out under the Habitats Regulations. Before this change, Ramsar sites mattered in planning, but the law did not place them inside the same statutory assessment route in this way. **What this means:** if a project in England could affect one of these wetlands, decision-makers now have to use the same assessment approach they would use for a European site. This is about how possible harm is tested before a decision is made, not about an automatic ban on development.

The regulations also include transitional provisions, which are the law’s way of saying that not every older project is pulled into the new system. Regulation 4 says the habitat changes do not apply to projects authorised by a planning permission granted before 17 August 2020. They also do not apply to projects authorised by a general consent if the relevant date fell before 21 May 2026, the day the new provisions came into force. **Why that matters:** when you read planning law, dates often decide which rulebook applies.

There is a subtle point about planning permission under section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Where a permission was granted under section 73, the regulations say the important date is not the later section 73 permission itself but the date the previous permission was granted. That may sound technical, but the idea is simple. If a developer later asks to vary conditions on an existing permission, the law looks back to the earlier permission when deciding whether the transitional cut-off of 17 August 2020 has been met.

The phrase general consent also needs translating. The regulations define it as permission granted under Part 3 of the 1990 Act for a description or class of development in an order, scheme or zone, rather than a one-off permission written for a single named project. Some of these consents involve prior approval. In those cases, the relevant date is the date prior approval was given, the date the authority said prior approval was not needed, or the date the time limit expired for deciding whether prior approval was required. In other general consent cases, the relevant date is when the development actually started. You can think of prior approval as a limited extra check inside a broader permission route.

So, the short version is this. From 21 May 2026, England’s planning system must treat Ramsar sites like European sites when carrying out habitat assessments, but some older projects stay under the older rules because of the cut-off dates. For students, teachers and anyone trying to read public law without a headache, this is a useful example of how a short statutory instrument can quietly change real-world decisions. The explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk also says an impact assessment for the wider Act has been produced. If you want the quickest test when reading a planning dispute, ask two questions first: when was the project authorised, and was it authorised by ordinary planning permission or by general consent?