Planning Reform: Development and Nature Recovery and Streamlining Infrastructure Planning

Planning reform working papers on Development and Nature Recovery and Streamlining Infrastructure Planning – Temple’s response

At Temple, we are committed to sustainable development, balancing societal needs and economic development together with environmental protection and enhancement. As one of the UK’s leading infrastructure and property consultancy practices, we leverage over 25 years of expertise in environment, ecology, planning, and sustainability. We pride ourselves in influencing policy and driving positive change.

We are excited to share that we have submitted our responses to the government’s Planning Reform Papers: Development and Nature Recovery and Streamlining Infrastructure Planning consultations. As a leading environmental consultancy, we are deeply committed to shaping policies that balance development with nature protection. By engaging in these consultations, we are using our vast experience and expertise to advocate for sustainable solutions, ensuring that future policies reflect both environmental responsibility and practical progress. We are grateful for this opportunity to contribute to driving meaningful change and a future where our nation, economy, society and environment thrive together.

We welcome and acknowledge the working papers’ ambitions to accelerate development and support the government in its aims to ensure robust, efficient processes. However, we have raised concerns about its potential risks to nature, infrastructure delivery and effective stakeholder engagement. Our response highlights the need for a clearer definition of “accelerated development” to ensure long-term, sustainable, and affordable solutions—rather than short-term gains that may increase costs and complexity and introduce uncertainty and, conversely, add short to medium term delays.

We offer our learned and lived perspectives and vast experience setting out the reasons for delays in the delivery of our critical infrastructure, challenging some of the presumptions in the public discourse and offering our suggestions to improve the system. We note specifically that decisions to pause major schemes and cancel key elements have subsequent deleterious effects on business cases, reduce efficiencies, erode key skills and invested knowledge, affect staff retention and ultimately increase delivery programmes and costs. Whilst some improvements within the current regulatory planning process are

noted, it remains to be seen whether the new government’s approach can be different and remove more of the more prominent key hurdles by providing surety of funding, avoiding constantly changing scope, providing consistent policy direction and resisting highhanded political oversight. These issues are not new and must be addressed to maintain investor confidence that we can deliver critical infrastructure. Instead of replacing an existing planning system that already provides environmental safeguards, we advocate an approach of evolution rather than a revolution into the existing framework to deliver more effective, lower-risk, and faster results.

Our recommendations and suggestions come from extensive experience delivering nationally significant infrastructure projects, and with a team including several distinguished industry leaders, we work on many exciting, complex, challenging and globally relevant projects, programmes and schemes and are rightly proud of our many and varied achievements. As such, we are experts in the practical application and navigation of the full range of different consenting regimes (including DCO, DNS, TWAO, TCPA and Hybrid Bills).

Amongst the multitude of professional and industry memberships we hold, including CIEEM, CIWEM, RTPI, IES and EIC, we are also an active and founding member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment’s (IEMA’s) EIA Quality Mark.

As recognised leaders in the field of built and natural environments and creating sustainable futures, our advice and insight are valued and sought by investors, developers, contractors, local authorities, statutory providers and consultees, government departments and conservation bodies alike.

We would like to thank the following Temple Staff for their contributions and input into the responses:

Mark Skelton, CEO

Thomas Smeeton, Senior Director

Lizzie Sanders, Director

Robert Slatcher, Director

Alex Blackman, Associate Director

Jacqueline Waring, Associate Director

David Hope-Thomson, Technical Specialist

Evie Scott, Principal Consultant

Jessica Wilson, Principal Consultant

Emma Howie, Senior Consultant

Tom Harris, Consultant

Marianna Rostkowska, Graduate Consultant

Venus Langley, Graduate Consultant