Judicial review reforms to be expanded as UK infrastructure funding gap flagged

Robbie Owen, an infrastructure planning and consenting expert at Pinsent Masons, was commenting after UK chancellor John Healey last week set out the government’s intention to make changes to government consultation practice generally, and to proceed with further reforms to judicial review procedures for ‘nationally significant infrastructure projects’ (NSIPs).

Judicial review is a form of legal challenge that permits a court to audit the legality of decision-making by a public body in the UK. However, in recent years, there have been growing concerns that nationally important infrastructure projects have been too easily derailed by judicial review. Notably, the building of the Sizewell C nuclear power plant was delayed by two judicial reviews, both of which ended up being dismissed by the courts. The proposed tunnel under Stonehenge was also delayed by over four years by two sets of judicial reviews, leading to the incoming government in July 2024 deciding that inflation in the meantime had resulted in the project no longer being affordable.

In early 2025, the UK government confirmed that it would take forward recommendations made by Lord Charlie Banner KC following his review into legal challenges against NSIPs. Some reforms followed via the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, with a streamlining of the judicial review process and enhancement of court powers to dismiss applications that are without merit at an early stage with no right to appeal.

Subsequently, in May 2026 the Starmer government outlined two plans to limit further the scope for judicial reviews, including in relation to ‘critical’ national energy projects designated by parliament. However, Healey said the government will go further and “extend our reforms of judicial review from energy to all major infrastructure so that vexatious legislation and vexatious litigation cannot block economic growth.” 

Documents released alongside John Healey’s comments confirmed that the government was planning to proceed with those same May 2026 proposals, but as expanded in terms of the types of projects covered.

“Parliament will be able to designate and approve the country’s most important infrastructure projects giving them significant enhanced protection from legal challenge,” the government said. “This expands plans first proposed for critical energy infrastructure, extending the parliamentary authorisation mechanism to a wider range of nationally important projects. The relevant Secretary of State would identify projects of critical national importance, with Parliament voting to approve their designation and final consent.” 

“The government also plans to introduce a fixed Challenge Window, which will ensure points of legal challenge are identified and addressed earlier, helping prevent delays after consent has already been granted. This will provide greater certainty once decisions have been taken,” it added.

Healy’s announcement followed a consultation by the Ministry of Justice that closed on 27 August, which sought industry views on extending judicial review reform for NSIPs to other planning regimes.

Broader moves to reduce the number of consultations and reporting requirements that can hold up project development have also been set out in a related letter penned to ministers (3 pages / 315 KB PDF) by the chancellor, the first secretary of state, Louise Haigh, and the attorney general, Ellie Reeves KC. However, those commitments have been followed this week by the publication of a new report by the Public Private Partnership Commission (PPPC) which flagged the need for much greater public and private investment if the UK’s infrastructure needs are to be met.

The PPPC is an advocacy group backed by business groups, including Kier, Serco and Dalmore Capital. Its chair is Sir John Armitt, the former chair of the now defunct National Infrastructure Commission (NIC). The NIC was replaced by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), which now has a leading role to play in both UK infrastructure strategy and on delivery. NISTA published its 10-year strategy and first UK infrastructure pipeline last year.

The PPPC said: “The pipeline, ambitious as it is, is not going to meet the country’s needs for infrastructure investment, as set out by the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) in its needs assessment (NIA2). According to this Commission’s modelling, to meet the requirements set out in NIA2 spending over the decade would have to be two thirds higher. If we assume the same public/private split as in the current pipeline, this would mean an extra £258bn of investment for government over the next 10 years, an average of an additional £26bn per year.”

The PPPC has called on the government to develop “partnership models” to help catalyse private investment, so that there is less pressure on finding public money for the infrastructure the UK needs. Its report cites polling it commissioned, which shows support among most UK adults for more private investment in national infrastructure.

“Six in ten people support greater private investment in infrastructure, compared with one in ten who oppose it,” the PPPC said. “When asked how infrastructure should be financed within existing fiscal constraints, more respondents selected private investment than borrowing and taxation combined across all sectors of the economy. The central question is therefore not whether private capital should play a role, but how government structures that involvement to secure value for the public whilst ensuring a return on investment that attracts a sufficient quantity of capital.”

In his foreword to the report, Sir John Armitt said that “the memory of the ‘bad’ deals” agreed under the UK’s previous private finance initiative (PFI) “has choked off private investment from whole classes of infrastructure for the better part of a decade”. He said more could be done to invest the money held in UK pensions in infrastructure projects but that “the routes” to invest such money need to be created.

Armitt said: “Partnership done properly was never simply a finance trick. It is a delivery and governance model. A way of bringing commercial discipline and incentives, delivery expertise and long-term capital into projects early, and of putting each risk with the party best able to manage and bear it.”

The PPPC has promised to publish a second report in early 2027 that it has said will examine which PPP models might best suit different types of infrastructure projects.

Robbie Owen of Pinsent Masons said: “John Armitt’s comments provide a timely and important context for the government’s very welcome decision to proceed with these further judicial review reforms. But it’s clear that a root and branch review of the barriers to private investment in UK infrastructure projects generally should be carried out by government, so that the barriers can be removed and the increased investment in infrastructure the UK badly needs is incentivised.”

“Good progress has already been made with removing planning barriers, but these two further measures will provide necessary and appropriate improvements and enhancements to the development consent order (DCO) process. I am pleased that government has heard the calls for the measures to apply to all forms of critically nationally important infrastructure, so including transport and water projects,” he said,

“A lot of detailed work is now needed, however, before legislation can be introduced, to develop the measures into workable propositions.  It’s important that the measures do not slow down DCOs, and in cases where parliamentary confirmation of DCOs is to replace the right to a judicial review, that the procedures provide a meaningful role for parliament whilst not repeating the prior DCO process,” Owen added.