RIBA data showed that 57% of practices had projects delayed by between one and six months because of planning backlogs. That is not a policy abstraction. It is a hole in the resource plan, a stalled fee stage, and a design team sitting idle while the invoice that was supposed to fund the next quarter refuses to arrive. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 is the Government's answer to that backlog, and it is now landing on real projects.
This article sets out what the Act actually does, when each part of it takes effect, and what changes for the people who have to run projects through the system. We will look at the shift to full cost-recovery fees at local planning authority level, the narrowing of legal challenge routes, and the staged commencement running from December 2025 into 2026 and beyond. Then we will get practical: how to model a stalled project, how to redeploy a team without losing money, and what to put in front of clients when the programme slips.
Why planning reform matters in the UK right now
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025. Unlike a single switch-on date, its provisions are commencing in tranches: some took effect in December 2025, a further group in February 2026, and others follow later as secondary legislation and guidance catch up. That staggered pattern matters enormously in practice, because two applications submitted to the same authority a few weeks apart can now sit under materially different rules.
Two changes will be felt fastest. The first is fees. Local planning authorities can set their own charges on a full cost-recovery basis rather than working to a nationally fixed schedule. The intent is straightforward: properly funded planning departments should be able to recruit and hold onto officers, which is where the backlog actually lives. The consequence for applicants is equally straightforward. Application fees will vary by authority, they will generally go up, and the fee line in your project budget can no longer be copied across from last year's job.
The second is challenge. The Act reduces the routes available for legal challenge to major infrastructure decisions from three to at most two, removing a layer of repeat attempts that had become a reliable source of delay on nationally significant projects. For architects working on large mixed-use, energy, transport or logistics schemes, that compresses the tail of risk at the end of the consenting process, even though it does nothing directly for a small residential application stuck in a validation queue.
Key takeaways
- The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, with provisions commencing in December 2025, February 2026 and later tranches.
- Local planning authorities can now set application fees on a full cost-recovery basis, so fees will diverge between authorities and generally rise.
- Legal challenge routes for major infrastructure decisions drop from three to at most two, shortening the risk tail on large schemes.
- RIBA data showed 57% of practices had projects delayed by one to six months due to planning backlogs; reform will take time to clear that.
- The commercial defence is operational: stage-based fee tracking, live resource forecasting and disbursement recovery, not optimism about determination dates.
A six-month slip on a single Stage 3 fee can swallow an entire quarter's forecast cash for a small practice. Reform is welcome, but it does not retrospectively fill that gap.
What this means for architects, planning consultants, developers and urban design firms
For architects and urban design firms, the immediate effect is budgetary. Full cost-recovery fees mean the planning application disbursement is now a genuine variable rather than a rounding error, and it must be confirmed with the specific authority before an appointment is signed. Practices that absorb disbursements into a lump-sum fee, or that recharge them late and inconsistently, will quietly lose money on every application submitted into a higher-charging authority. The fix is unglamorous: quote disbursements separately, confirm the current fee at the point of appointment, and recover them on the next invoice run rather than at project close.
For planning consultants, the staged commencement creates an advisory opportunity and an exposure at the same time. Clients will ask which rules apply to their scheme, and the honest answer depends on submission date, authority and the specific provision in question. Keeping a live internal note of what has commenced, and when, is now part of the service. Getting it wrong is a professional indemnity conversation nobody wants.
For developers, the narrowing of challenge routes changes the shape of programme risk on major schemes. Less time should be lost to sequential challenges, which improves the case for committing to design spend earlier. But the front end of the process, validation and determination at local authority level, is still constrained by officer capacity. Better-funded departments should improve that, though recruitment cycles mean the benefit arrives over years rather than months. Plan for the current reality; be pleasantly surprised by the improvement.
Fees become a live variable
Application fees now differ by authority under cost recovery. Confirm the figure before you fix a fee proposal, and recharge disbursements as a distinct, tracked line rather than folding them into the lump sum.
Programme assumptions need dates
Which provisions apply depends on when a scheme is submitted. Record the assumed determination date in the appointment and flag explicitly what happens commercially if it moves.
Idle capacity is the real cost
A delayed consent leaves a design team with nothing chargeable to do. The practices that cope have visibility of who is free next month, not who was busy last month.
How firms are managing planning delays today
Most practices deal with planning uncertainty through some combination of spreadsheets, a scheduling tool and institutional memory. That works up to a point. A well-built spreadsheet is flexible, cheap and understood by everyone in the room. Point tools such as a dedicated resource planner or a standalone time app usually do their one job well. The difficulty is that planning delay is a cross-cutting event: it hits the programme, the fee stage, the invoice schedule, the utilisation forecast and the cash position simultaneously, and disconnected systems force someone to reconcile all five by hand, usually at month end, usually too late to act.
| What you need | Spreadsheets | Point tools | Quantim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live fee and WIP visibility | Accurate on the day it is updated; drifts quickly between updates. | Often present, but usually separated from the timesheet source data. | Fee stages, time booked and WIP update together from one record. |
| Forward resource forecasting | Possible with effort; re-planning a slipped project means rebuilding the grid. | Strong scheduling, but rarely aware of the fee or margin behind the hours. | Push a stage date and the forecast, utilisation and cash view all move with it. |
| Auditable time records | Reliant on discipline; retrospective edits are hard to trace. | Usually good, though the data often stays inside the tool. | Time captured against stage and task, retained with a clear audit trail. |
| Reporting effort at month end | Manual consolidation across files; hours of senior time each cycle. | Good single-domain reports; cross-domain answers need exporting. | Standing dashboards for utilisation, margin and pipeline; no rebuild. |
| Scaling across a portfolio | Fine for a handful of projects; fragile beyond twenty or so. | Scales within its own domain but multiplies integration work. | One structure across every project, stage and office as the practice grows. |
How Quantim helps
Planning delays wreck resource plans and cash flow. That is the core problem, and it is an operational one rather than a legal one. Quantim addresses it through stage-based fee tracking and forecasting, so a practice can model a stalled project rather than discover it. When a determination date moves, you can see immediately which fee stage is now unbillable, what that does to the month's revenue, which people are freed up as a result, and where they can be redeployed before the gap becomes lost time.
- Structure every appointment by fee stage. Record the fee, the assumed dates and the planning disbursement as distinct lines so a slip is visible at stage level rather than buried in a project total.
- Model the delay scenario. Move the stage date in the forecast and read the effect on revenue, utilisation and cash across the next two quarters before you decide anything.
- Redeploy against the forecast. Use the resulting capacity view to move designers onto live work or bid activity, and track the recovered hours so the decision can be measured, not just asserted.
See how stage-based fee tracking keeps a stalled planning application from becoming a cash flow problem.
Request a demoPlanning reform will eventually shorten the queue, but only better forecasting protects your margin while you are still standing in it.
"We used to find out a planning delay had hurt us when the month-end numbers came in. Now the moment a determination date moves, we can see which stage is stuck, what it costs us and who is suddenly free. Last quarter that let us move three people onto a live fit-out instead of carrying them."
Practice Director, 45-person architecture practice, Manchester
Checklist for practice leaders
- Confirm the current application fee directly with each relevant local planning authority before issuing a fee proposal, and re-check it for any proposal older than three months.
- Separate planning disbursements from professional fees in every appointment, and set them to be recharged on the next invoice run rather than at project completion.
- Add an explicit clause covering what happens to fees and programme if determination extends beyond the assumed date.
- Maintain an internal note of which Act provisions have commenced and when, so advice given to clients is dated and defensible.
- Review the forward resource forecast weekly, not monthly, and treat any project waiting on a determination as at-risk capacity.
- Build a standing redeployment list of internal work, bid support and delivery tasks that can absorb freed-up design time at short notice.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 mean for architects?
In day-to-day terms it means two things. Application fees are now set locally on a full cost-recovery basis, so the disbursement figure varies by authority and should be confirmed for every scheme rather than assumed. Second, the Act aims to reduce delay by better resourcing planning departments and by cutting legal challenge routes on major infrastructure from three to at most two. For most architectural work the practical effect arrives gradually, so budget and programme assumptions should still reflect current determination times, not hoped-for ones.
When do Planning and Infrastructure Act provisions come into force?
The Act received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 and is commencing in stages rather than all at once. An initial group of provisions took effect in December 2025, a further tranche from February 2026, and additional measures follow later as commencement regulations and guidance are issued. Because the picture keeps moving, check the position for the specific provision and submission date that affect your scheme. The Jones Day analysis is a useful reference point on the planning aspects.
How can practices manage projects through planning delays in the UK?
Treat delay as a resourcing and cash event, not just a programme one. Break appointments into fee stages so a stalled consent shows up as a specific unbillable stage rather than a vague slippage. Model the revised date in your forecast to see the effect on revenue and utilisation over the next two quarters. Then redeploy the freed capacity deliberately, onto live projects, bid work or internal delivery, and record it. Practices that do this consistently absorb a six-month planning delay without an emergency.
Planning reform is a multi-year process, and the backlog that delayed projects for more than half of RIBA-surveyed practices will not clear on the day a provision commences. What practices can control is how quickly they see the commercial consequence of a slip and how decisively they respond to it. Stage-level fee visibility, an honest forward forecast and a habit of redeploying capacity early turn a planning delay from a crisis into a manageable adjustment. Explore the features and benefits to see how Quantim brings fee tracking, resource forecasting and profitability reporting into one view for UK practices.