Bill aims to make Welsh planning law more accessible, consistent, and easier to navigate

The Bill aims to consolidate planning law in Wales by bringing together provisions from the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, along with more recent legislation, such as the Planning Act 2008, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, and the Planning (Wales) Act 2015, into a single, bilingual legal framework.

Although the draft Bill has not yet been formally introduced to the Senedd, it is expected to be brought forward in September 2025. It will be accompanied by the Planning (Consequential Provisions) (Wales) Bill, which will address repeals, transitional arrangements, and other technical amendments.

Key changes

While the Bill does not introduce any new policies, a number of key presentational and interpretative changes are being proposed:

• The Bill retains the definition of ‘development’ but restates it across four clearer sections to improve interpretation, distinguishing between physical operations and material changes of use, while explicitly confirming that demolition constitutes development, and that any increase in gross internal floorspace also qualifies as development.

• It modernises and simplifies legal language to improve accessibility and align with operational practice, replacing outdated terms with clearer alternatives such as, ‘material considerations’ changing to ‘relevant considerations’ and ‘planning contravention notices’ renamed ‘enforcement investigation notices’.

• The hierarchy and roles of development plans, including the National Development Framework, emerging Strategic Development Plans, and Local Development Plans, are more clearly defined, with the Bill removing outdated references to superseded plan types, and formalising requirements for review, adoption, and public engagement.

• Finally, it updates legal terminology to reflect Wales’s current governance structure, removing outdated references and instead adopting the unified term ‘planning authorities’ to encompass both local authorities and National Park authorities.

Implications and Next Steps

The consolidation of existing legislation within the draft Bill carries important implications for the Welsh planning system by making planning law more accessible, consistent, and easier to navigate.

The streamlined structure reduces legal ambiguity through clearer definitions and the integration of procedural rules, providing local planning authorities with a more coherent legal framework that supports greater consistency in plan-making, enforcement, and consultation.