UK Infrastructure Planning Rules Set 35-Day Deadline
Most statutory instruments are written for lawyers and planning specialists, so it helps to start with the plain-English version. This one, published on legislation.gov.uk as the Infrastructure Planning (Timetable for Deciding Request for Direction) Regulations 2026, does one practical thing: it sets a deadline for how long the Secretary of State has to answer certain infrastructure planning requests. Signed by Minister of State Matthew Pennycook on 30 June 2026 and laid before Parliament on 3 July 2026, the regulation comes into force on 24 July 2026. That date matters because it is when this new timetable starts to apply.
To see why that matters, you need one piece of background. The Planning Act 2008 is the law used for certain nationally significant infrastructure projects. In the explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk, the government says a direction under section 35B(1) disapplies the requirement for development consent. In simpler terms, someone can ask ministers not to require that development consent route for a project. This regulation is not the decision on whether a project should go ahead. It is the rule about how quickly government must answer that earlier request.
The main rule is quite direct. Once the Secretary of State receives what the law calls a qualifying request, there are 35 days to make a decision. The regulation names this the primary deadline, and the 35-day count begins on the day the request is received. What this means for readers is simple: the default position is speed. Unless ministers ask for more information, there should be an answer within just over a month, rather than an open-ended wait.
There is one important exception, and this is where the wording becomes more technical. If the Secretary of State asks the requestor for more information before that first 35-day window runs out, the requestor then has 21 days to provide it. The regulation calls that the secondary deadline. After that, the government gets a fresh 35-day period to decide the request. That new period begins on the day after the 21-day deadline, or on the day after the information is actually received, whichever comes sooner. In effect, the law gives ministers extra time to consider new material, but it also stops the process from stretching on without a clear end point.
Where the rule applies is also carefully drawn. The regulation extends to England and Wales, and also to Scotland in one narrow situation: the construction, other than by a gas transporter, of an oil or gas cross-country pipe-line where one end is in England or Wales and the other is in Scotland. That may sound very specific, but this is a good example of how infrastructure law often works. A rule can look broad at first glance, then turn out to cover only certain types of project in certain places. The text makes those boundaries explicit so there is less room for confusion later.
The legal backstory matters too. The power to make these regulations comes from section 35D of the Planning Act 2008. The footnotes on legislation.gov.uk explain that section 35D was inserted by section 4 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, and that this part of the 2025 Act is brought into force on 24 July 2026 by the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (Commencement No. 4 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026. If you are learning how government changes planning rules, this is a useful pattern to notice. Parliament passes an Act, a later commencement rule switches part of it on, and then a separate statutory instrument fills in the timetable or process people must follow.
The final explanatory note says no full impact assessment has been produced because the government does not expect a significant effect on the private, voluntary or public sector. That tells us ministers see this as a process change, not a major rewrite of infrastructure planning policy. The clearest takeaway is this: from 24 July 2026, there is a firm timetable for deciding whether some infrastructure projects should be taken out of the development consent route. It does not give any project automatic approval, and it does not settle the wider planning argument. What it does give is a clearer clock, and in planning decisions that kind of certainty can matter a great deal.