IN Brief:
- A six-week consultation will examine judicial-review procedures for major developments.
- Ministers want to reduce repeated unsuccessful challenges and clarify court timetables.
- The proposed changes extend beyond nationally significant infrastructure projects.
The Ministry of Justice has opened a six-week consultation on further restrictions to judicial reviews involving major housing, transport, and energy developments.
The proposals would extend recent reforms for nationally significant infrastructure projects to a wider group of developments authorised through the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and Transport and Works Act 1992. Ministers are examining whether repeated unsuccessful attempts to secure permission for judicial review should be limited and whether clearer court timetables should apply.
Changes introduced through the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 altered the judicial-review route for nationally significant infrastructure projects, including the number of opportunities available to challenge a consent decision where a case had already been found to lack merit.
The new consultation considers whether comparable principles should apply to major housing schemes and other infrastructure developments outside the nationally significant regime. It will also examine how faster procedures can be reconciled with access to the courts where planning or consent decisions may have been made unlawfully.
Judicial review does not reopen the planning merits of a development. Instead, it examines whether the decision-making process was lawful, including whether the correct procedure was followed, relevant evidence was considered, and statutory duties were met.
Where a challenge succeeds, consent can be quashed and returned to the decision-maker. Even unsuccessful proceedings can affect land transactions, financing, procurement, enabling works, and contractor mobilisation, particularly where projects depend on time-limited funding or linked infrastructure agreements.
Earlier stages will carry greater weight
Shorter or more restricted legal routes would place additional emphasis on the work completed before consent is granted. Environmental assessment, consultation records, equality duties, technical evidence, alternatives analysis, and the reasoning provided by decision-makers will need to withstand scrutiny at the first attempt.
Planning authorities and project promoters may consequently face greater pressure to resolve deficiencies during pre-application and examination. A faster court process does not remove the legal duties attached to development, and weak documentation can still cause substantial delay where the court finds that a decision was unlawful.
Legal certainty sits alongside finance, procurement, utility capacity, land assembly, and build-cost viability in determining whether consented schemes move into construction. The gap between approvals and starts remained visible during the second quarter of 2026, when stronger elements of the planning pipeline did not produce a comparable improvement in live activity.
The government has set a target of deciding 150 major infrastructure projects during the current Parliament. It has also pursued changes to pre-application requirements for nationally significant infrastructure projects, aiming to remove lengthy mandatory consultation stages and shorten development programmes.
Greater certainty over challenge periods could allow promoters to move more quickly from consent into enabling works. That pace will favour teams that complete design coordination, land access, surveys, utility planning, environmental mitigation, and commercial negotiations in parallel with the planning process rather than waiting for every legal route to expire.
Accelerated decision-making can also compress procurement and mobilisation periods. Major schemes often require early contractor involvement, specialist design, logistics planning, supply-chain reservations, and temporary works development long before the principal construction contract is signed.
Opposition may also move into earlier stages if access to judicial review becomes narrower. Local-plan preparation, consultation, parliamentary scrutiny, compulsory-purchase procedures, and examination hearings could all attract greater pressure where communities or affected parties believe later legal routes have been reduced.
The eventual framework will need to distinguish between repetitive challenges offering little prospect of success and legitimate cases exposing defects in major decisions. Properly prepared projects may gain greater certainty, although the legal discipline required of planning authorities and infrastructure promoters will remain unchanged.
