Rebecca Evans MS, Cabinet Secretary Economy, Energy and Planning
The planning system drives sustainable economic growth and creates good jobs across the country, whilst also protecting our communities and environment.
We have been making significant improvements to the planning system to reflect the important role it has in shaping our future, and I take this opportunity to update colleagues on that work.
Our ambition is to make Wales the fastest country in the UK to determine infrastructure applications. This shows our clear commitment to giving developers and other applicants timely decisions, and providing certainty across key sectors including renewable energy, waste, water, and transport.
During 2025, 13 applications for Developments of National Significance (DNS) have been determined, demonstrating good progress towards achieving our ambition. In 2025 we reduced the average time taken to determine DNS applications by 6 weeks, to 30 weeks.
Following changes which we introduced, and which came into force in January 2025, Planning and Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW) has been empowered to decide applications for renewable energy projects of up to 50 Megawatts. Seven delegated decisions have been made, with all of these determined between 10 and 15 weeks ahead of the statutory decision deadline of 36 weeks. This has streamlined PEDW’s work, allowing it to maximise the use of available resources to other areas including making progress to clear the backlog of enforcement appeals. As a result, PEDW has determined 86% more enforcement decisions this year than last.
Further significant improvements will take place in 2026. The Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024 came into force on 15 December last year. This continues our commitment to the effective and efficient determination of large-scale infrastructure by providing a modern consenting process. To ensure the system is ready on day one, we provided funding during 2025 to strengthen the capacity of planning services provided by PEDW and Natural Resources Wales.
The system also enables full cost recovery, ensuring our public sector is properly resourced to help determine these applications in an effective and efficient manner. Our aim is to determine all applications in the 52 week statutory timeframe or before.
I highly value the important work undertaken by local planning authorities in supporting essential economic growth. Important examples from last year include the Port Talbot Electric Arc Furnace and Bridgend Vantage Data Centre applications. To ensure that all local planning authorities have the resources that they need, the new Fee Regulations took effect on 1 December 2025. The regulations increased planning application fees across the board and help to address the deficit between the cost of determining applications and the income received for providing this service. We are re-invigorating and reintroducing the Performance Framework to measure and monitor the performance of local authorities, and how extra resources are making a difference.
I expect the largest investment in our planning services in recent years to result in more planners on the ground, leading to more effective and faster planning decisions. Our Town Planning Bursary scheme covers the cost for graduates to obtain a postgraduate qualification, increasing our number of planners. We have also funded two new senior planner roles to support infrastructure projects via an expanded North Wales Shared Planning Service, reflecting the benefits regional planning can have on resourcing complex applications and would welcome further expression of interest for joint working proposals.
Supportive of this work, over the past seven months, Net Zero Industry Wales has been enabling the increase of resources within the planning process in Wales. Supported projects are diverse in their impact on Welsh industrial decarbonisation and fall under a range of planning processes. Over the next year NZIW is expecting to further support the planning and consenting process in Wales as more projects come online
Longer term, we commissioned RTPI Cymru to report on workforce planning to develop a clear picture of capacity, resourcing, and skills needs across the public sector. This will help shape our work with partners going forward and help to ensure that we have the planners that we need to make our ambition to be the fastest country in the UK to determine infrastructure applications a reality.