Infrastructure Planning Regulations Set 35-Day Deadline
Not every legal change arrives with a dramatic headline. Some come as short statutory instruments on legislation.gov.uk, and this is one of them. The Infrastructure Planning (Timetable for Deciding Request for Direction) Regulations 2026 were made on 30 June 2026, laid before Parliament on 3 July 2026, and come into force on 24 July 2026. What they do is straightforward once the legal wording is translated into plain English. They put a firm timetable around one specific planning decision: when the Secretary of State must answer what the law calls a qualifying request for a direction under section 35B(1) of the Planning Act 2008.
This is the part that can sound more technical than it really is, so it helps to slow down. Under the Planning Act 2008, some very large projects are treated as nationally significant infrastructure projects and usually need development consent through a special national process. A section 35B direction is about disapplying that requirement. So this regulation is not a final yes or no to a new scheme. It does not itself approve a road, pipeline or energy project. It sets the deadline for deciding whether a request to come out of that development consent route should be granted.
Regulation 2 creates the main clock. Once the Secretary of State receives a qualifying request, a decision must be made before the end of 35 days, starting with the day the request is received. That may sound like a narrow procedural point, but procedure matters. If you are a developer, a local authority, a campaigner or a resident trying to follow a project, deadlines shape how long everyone waits for the next move. A statutory timetable cannot settle every argument, but it can stop a request drifting without an answer.
Regulation 3 adds an important qualification. If the Secretary of State asks for more information before that first 35-day period expires, the person making the request must provide it within 21 days. After that, the decision timetable runs for 35 days again, beginning with the day after either the 21-day information deadline or the day the information is actually received, whichever comes sooner. In everyday terms, ministers can ask for more detail, but they cannot turn that request into an open-ended pause.
The rules extend to England and Wales and, in a much narrower way, to Scotland as well. The Scottish reach only applies where there is a cross-border oil or gas cross-country pipeline, not constructed by a gas transporter, with one end in England or Wales and the other in Scotland. That detail may feel highly specialised, but it tells you something useful about infrastructure law. Big projects do not always fit neatly inside one national border, so regulations often have to deal with those edge cases as carefully as the main rule.
The power to make these regulations comes from section 35D of the Planning Act 2008. That section was inserted by section 4 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and is brought into force on 24 July 2026, the same day these timetable rules begin to apply. The instrument was signed on 30 June 2026 by Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, acting under the authority of the Secretary of State. The explanatory note also says no full impact assessment was produced because no significant effect on the private, voluntary or public sector was expected.
What this means for you is modest but important. From 24 July 2026, there is a clearer legal clock on a small but meaningful part of the infrastructure planning system. The change is about timing, not about weakening scrutiny or automatically helping projects through. That is why statutory deadlines matter. They tell you who must act, by when, and how much room there is for delay. In a planning system often criticised for being slow and hard to follow, even a short regulation like this can make the rules a little clearer.