Infrastructure planning deadlines start 24 July 2026
If you have ever wondered how a short legal text can affect big national projects, this is a useful place to start. The new 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. The version published on legislation.gov.uk looks technical, but the main change is simple: it puts a timetable on how quickly the Secretary of State must decide certain infrastructure planning requests. That matters because time limits shape power. When government has to answer within a set period, developers, campaigners, local authorities and communities all get a clearer sense of when a decision should arrive. This regulation is not flashy, but it is part of how the planning system becomes more predictable.
To make sense of this, we need one bit of context. The Planning Act 2008 created a special route for nationally significant infrastructure projects, such as major energy, transport and pipeline schemes. The explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk says these new regulations deal with requests for a direction under section 35B(1) of that Act, where someone is asking for the requirement for development consent to be disapplied. **What this means:** this regulation does not approve a new road, rail line or pipeline by itself. It sets the clock for deciding whether a project can be taken out of the development consent route. That sounds narrow, but process rules like this can change the speed and certainty of a project in real life.
The central rule is in regulation 2. Once the Secretary of State receives a qualifying request, a decision must normally be made before the end of 35 days, starting with the day the request is received. In the regulation, that is called the primary deadline. For readers learning how statutory instruments work, this is a good example of law doing something practical rather than dramatic. It does not rewrite the whole planning system. It fixes a deadline and tells decision-makers they cannot leave a request hanging indefinitely, unless the separate information rule in regulation 3 applies.
Regulation 3 is where the timetable becomes slightly more detailed. If, before that first 35-day period ends, the Secretary of State asks the requestor for more information, the requestor then has 21 days to provide it. The regulation calls that the secondary deadline. After that, the decision still has to come within 35 days, but the new counting point depends on what happens next. The clock starts on the day after the secondary deadline ends, or on the day after the information is actually received, whichever comes sooner. In plain English, officials can ask for more detail, but they still cannot let the process drift for months.
The geographical reach is also worth noticing. These regulations extend to England and Wales and, in a much narrower way, to Scotland. According to the text on legislation.gov.uk, the Scottish element applies only where it is needed for the construction of an oil or gas cross-country pipeline, not built by a gas transporter, with one end in England or Wales and the other in Scotland. That may sound very specialised, and it is. But it also shows you something important about infrastructure law: borders inside the UK can make planning rules more complicated, especially when pipelines or other networks cross from one nation into another.
The instrument was signed 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 legal power for making these regulations comes from section 35D of the Planning Act 2008, and the note explains that section 35D was inserted by the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. That part of the 2025 Act is itself brought into force on 24 July 2026 by separate commencement regulations. This is one of the quiet lessons of public law. A new rule often rests on an older Act, plus an amending Act, plus a commencement instrument. If you are trying to read legislation clearly, dates matter just as much as definitions.
There is also a short policy signal in the explanatory note. No full impact assessment was produced because no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. We should read that carefully. It does not mean the regulation is pointless. It means the government sees this as a procedural adjustment rather than a major economic change. For The Common Room reader, the bigger lesson is this: statutory instruments often change how decisions are made before they change what gets built. From 24 July 2026, there will be a firmer timetable for these planning requests. If you want to understand infrastructure politics, it helps to watch the small legal mechanisms, because they often decide how quickly bigger arguments move.