Chancellor John Healey has announced that the government will extend its judicial review reforms from energy projects to major infrastructure programmes, as part of a wider push to reduce legal delays affecting UK investment and construction delivery. The commitment was made in Healey’s Growth Speech on 7 September 2026. However, the government has not yet published the detailed legislation defining exactly how the wider regime will operate, which projects will qualify or when the expanded measures will take effect.
The announcement adds another layer to reforms already introduced for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), where legal challenges after consent can create significant programme uncertainty. London Construction Magazine recently examined this issue following the Court of Appeal decision affecting Gatwick Airport’s £2.2bn Northern Runway programme, where development consent remained in place after a series of legal challenges.
What Healey Has Actually Announced
In his 7 September Growth Speech, Healey said the government would extend its reforms of judicial review from energy to all major infrastructure, arguing that legal challenges should not be able to block economic growth. The announcement builds on a package already under development. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 introduced measures limiting repeated attempts to pursue legal challenges against major infrastructure decisions where a claim is found by the court to be totally without merit. Government changes to court procedures have also introduced tighter target timescales for NSIP cases.
A further HM Treasury policy paper published in May 2026 proposed two additional mechanisms for infrastructure consenting: parliamentary authorisation for a narrow category of projects considered to be of Critical National Importance, and a structured challenge window intended to identify legal issues before a final Development Consent Order is issued. Under the May proposal, parliamentary authorisation was specifically aimed at selected critical energy schemes. The Energy Secretary would designate a project, MPs would vote on that designation and the normal Development Consent Order examination would continue. A final parliamentary vote could then give the DCO statutory protection similar to primary legislation, restricting judicial review except on human rights grounds.
Healey’s latest speech clearly signals an intention to move beyond the original energy focus, but it does not confirm whether that same parliamentary mechanism will apply unchanged to every category of major infrastructure. Until detailed proposals or legislation are published, the announcement should therefore be treated as a government policy commitment rather than a new consenting regime already in force.
Why Judicial Review Matters to Construction Programmes
For construction teams, the distinction matters because planning or development consent does not automatically provide complete delivery certainty. A project can have statutory approval while outstanding legal proceedings continue to affect investment decisions, procurement strategy, major package commitments and the timing of mobilisation. The same principle applies further upstream. London Construction Magazine’s coverage of the Heathrow third runway policy consultation showed how national policy, parliamentary scrutiny, Development Consent Order preparation and eventual construction remain separate stages rather than a single approval event.
The government said in May that its existing judicial review reforms could make the process for major infrastructure up to six months faster. In July, the Ministry of Justice also consulted on extending NSIP-style judicial review reforms to other planning regimes in England and Wales, including strategically important projects consented through the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and Transport and Works Act 1992. The construction impact will therefore depend less on whether legal challenge disappears altogether and more on whether challenges can be resolved earlier and within more predictable programmes.
Lawyer Warns Challenges Could Shift to Human Rights Grounds
Paolo Caldato, Commercial Dispute Resolution Partner at Spencer West LLP. Image: Spencer West.
Paolo Caldato, Commercial Dispute Resolution Partner at Spencer West and leader of the firm’s Dispute Resolution group, said the proposed approach could shorten infrastructure delays without removing legal challenges entirely.
Commenting on the proposals, Paolo, told London Construction Magazine:
The Chancellor’s plan to shield Critical National Importance projects from standard judicial reviews is a welcome step for national resilience. In practice, however, it will not stop 'lawfare'; it will simply force it to evolve.
This proposal is caught between two fundamental, contradictory tensions. Constitutionally, bypassing standard judicial oversight risks eroding democratic accountability and executive checks and balances. Practically, leaving a human rights safeguard opens an obvious loophole. Because the UK remains a signatory to the ECHR, legal challengers will simply re-shape their claims around Article 8 rights.
The real victory for the Treasury won't be stopping legal challenges entirely, but compressing the calendar. By forcing these inevitable human rights battles into a hyper-accelerated court timetable, the government may successfully prevent legal actions from causing the multi-year construction delays that have historically paralysed British infrastructure.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether these proposals will survive the inevitable backlash that the Chancellor will face from backbench Labour MPs.
Caldato argues that retaining a human rights safeguard could lead some challengers to frame future cases around rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights, including Article 8. Whether that becomes a significant route for challenges will depend on the final legislation, individual project circumstances and how the courts apply the new regime.
LCM Analysis: Faster Courts Are Not the Same as Faster Sites
For contractors and consultants, the main construction significance is programme certainty rather than the removal of planning risk itself. Compressing the judicial review timetable could allow clients to reach investment, procurement and mobilisation decisions earlier, particularly on large infrastructure programmes where prolonged litigation can leave major packages commercially exposed. But a faster legal route does not convert a consent into a construction start. Funding, land, detailed design, procurement, statutory approvals, utilities, environmental requirements and project-specific regulatory conditions can remain outstanding after the legal position is resolved.
This distinction is particularly relevant to London, where the capital’s long-term transport, energy, water and digital requirements already create major dependencies between individual development programmes and wider infrastructure delivery. LCM’s analysis of the London Infrastructure Framework highlighted how coordination and sequencing can remain significant delivery constraints even where the strategic requirement for infrastructure is clear.
What Happens Next
The next meaningful step will be publication of the detailed proposals showing how Healey’s wider commitment will be translated into legislation and court procedure. It is not yet publicly confirmed exactly which projects will fall within the definition of all major infrastructure, whether the Critical National Importance parliamentary authorisation mechanism will be extended beyond energy, or how the latest announcement will interact with reforms already being considered for projects outside the NSIP regime.
Until those details are published, the construction sector has a clear direction of travel from government: reducing the time major projects spend exposed to legal challenge is now part of the wider infrastructure delivery agenda. The practical test will be whether the eventual reforms shorten the route from consent to commercial commitment without weakening legitimate scrutiny of major public decisions.
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Expert Verification & Authorship: Mihai Chelmus
Founder, London Construction Magazine | Construction Testing & Investigation Specialist |
