Government announces plans to boost infrastructure building

A new announcement by the government has meant that excessive rules on building infrastructure will be overhauled, leading to nuclear plants, trainlines and wind farms to be built much quicker.

Excessive rules mean that sometimes unarguable cause would be brought back to curt three times, which has resulted in years of delay and hundreds of millions lost to projects clogging up courts. Data shows that 58 per cent of all decisions on major infrastructure were taken to court, hindering the government’s mission to grow the economy.

The new rule will only allow one attempt at legal challenge, which intends to find a middle ground between access to justice and protections against genuine issues of propriety, while making a stand against a culture of small pressure groups using courts to obstruct decisions taken in national interest.

East Anglia wind farms were delayed by over two years from a group keeping the case in court, and the A47 National Highway Project to improve roads was delayed for two yers by a former Green Councillor whose case was eventually dismissed as having ‘no logical basis’. The courts have spent over 10,000 handling cases like these.

Prime minister Keir Starmer said: “For too long, blockers have had the upper hand in legal challenges — using our court processes to frustrate growth.

“We’re putting an end to this challenge culture by taking on the NIMBYs and a broken system that has slowed down our progress as a nation.

“This is the government’s Plan for Change in action — take the brakes off Britain by reforming the planning system so it is pro-growth and pro-infrastructure.

“The current first attempt — known as the paper permission stage — will be scrapped. And primary legislation will be changed so that where a judge in an oral hearing at the High Court deems the case Totally Without Meir, it will not be possible to ask then Court of Appeal to reconsider. To ensure ongoing access to justice, a request to appeal second attempt will be allowed for other cases.”