Infrastructure Planning Blog

42: Nuclear reforms, discharge of requirements and NPPF changes

This week’s entry looks at the Government’s response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025, the discharge of requirements for an offshore wind farm and National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) changes.

Nuclear Nation

The Government today published its response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025. We looked at the recommendations identified in the Review here (readers may recall that Mustafa Latif-Aramesh was a member of the Taskforce that produced it).

In summary, the Government is “committed to implementing these recommendations as quickly as possible”. For anything which requires legislation, the target is to bring legislation forward before the end of 2027. Other measures that do not require legislation could be implemented sooner.

The response is built around two objectives: (1) reinvigorating Britain’s nuclear sector; and (2) ensuring effective planning and environmental assessments.

Objective 1: Reinvigorating Britain’s nuclear sector

This objective will require some important changes to nuclear regulatory structures. These include:

Setting up a new Nuclear Commission

This will seek to address the absence of a single regulator capable of arbitrating between the numerous decision-makers currently involved on any nuclear fission programme. Setting this up will take time so the Government is proposing, in the immediate term, to appoint a lead regulator – the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) – and experience of operating this model will provide the blueprint for the Commission.

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Restoring proportionality

The Government will work with regulators and industry to develop, sign and publish a shared Proportionality Action Plan by Summer 2026. A fundamental part of this will be ensuring risk is defined in a proportionate way. The Health and Safety Executive’s 1988 Tolerability of Risk Framework (which categorises risks as ‘broadly acceptable’, ‘tolerable’ and ‘intolerable’) will be reviewed because it is being applied with excessive caution, often guiding regulators to impose safety upgrades where there are no health benefits, at significant cost. An independent panel will examine the application of the Framework and report by June 2026.

Establishing a Nuclear Regulatory Implementation Panel

The Panel will hold industry, regulators and the Government to account for implementing delivery plans for each of the Taskforce’s recommendations. The delivery plans can be found at Annex A of the Government’s response.

International harmonisation

The Government will also engage with European regulators to minimise duplicative national licensing processes (i.e., where an approval in one country can be relied on in another country provided defined standards are met).

Objective 2: Streamlining planning and environmental assessments

There are lots of significant proposals under this objective, including:

Changes to the application of the Habitats Regulations

Guidance will be published on excluding hypothetical or speculative risks from the scope of assessment and making clear that Habitats Regulations Assessments (HRA) can and should be reused for later schemes where it is sensible to do so. The Government will also legislate so that mitigation can, where appropriate, be considered at an earlier stage of the HRA process. Currently, mitigation cannot be relied upon to scope out the need for a stage 2 appropriate assessment under the Habitats Regulations. The Government will also look to adopt specific Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs), introduced by the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, for nuclear development, providing a route to offset the need for costly and time-consuming assessments by allowing developers to pay into a Nature Restoration Fund that covers the cost of the (pre-defined) mitigation measures identified in EDPs. Despite some unjustified commentary about regressions, the plans also adopt the Taskforce’s recommendations on HRA generally and even for an alternative pathway for defence sites.

Environmental Impact Assessment

The Government will also bring forward Environmental Outcomes Reports (EORs) (introduced by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 (LURA) but as yet not implemented) “as a matter of urgency”, and it has confirmed the EOR regime will be in force by 2027. This, it is anticipated, will streamline current EIA requirements, prioritising outcomes over process in line with the Taskforce's recommendations, including the establishment of "Modular Low-Carbon Acceleration Zones" (MLA Zones) and ensuring the Finch regime is adapted (Via EORs) for low-carbon projects. MLA zones will have streamlined assessment requirements on both EIA and HRA (the latter through EDPs).

Protected landscapes and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)

A streamlined mandatory BNG framework for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIP) will be implemented, details of which will be set out in the Government’s response to the 2025 consultation (see here for the 2025 consultation). A change to LURA will also be made to clarify that NSIP developers are not required to pay financial compensation to comply with the Protected Landscape Duty under s85(A1) of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The duty requires local planning authorities to “seek to further the purpose of conserving and enhancing” protected landscapes such as National Parks and has been interpreted, by some, to mean financial compensation must be paid wherever there is a potential impact on a protected landscape; the Review argued that this acts as an indirect tax on development, discouraging projects from coming forward. The evidence that is the case is now incontrovertible: almost six judicial reviews, and several projects forking out millions of pounds later, it is welcome that the Government is constraining the duty. We wrote about that duty in the blog here.

Further NSIP reforms

A number of further reforms to the NSIP process will be taken forward, including strengthening the Initial Assessment of Issues process at the beginning of the Development Consent Order (DCO) examination process; reinstatement and modernisation of model provisions for DCO drafting; and establishing a new unit within the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to strengthen post-consent discharge of requirement functions for nuclear projects. As regards non-NSIP reforms, Government will look at streamlining the environmental permitting process, as well as the planning processes for decommissioning and waste management.

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Judicial review reform

Further reforms to deter the misuse of the judicial review (JR) process will be explored, for example amending the costs cap for JRs and extending the NSIP JR reforms to environmental permitting and nuclear site licensing. Consideration will also be given to a Government backed indemnity for nuclear developments where a consent is subject to JR and costs are incurred as a result (e.g., due to delays).

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NPS EN-7

This will be updated in the next 12 months to introduce a new criterion that supports building fleets of reactors. In parallel, the Government is completing a review of the Semi-Urban Population Criterion, to increase the number of potentially suitable sites for all reactor classes.

The Government’s response is therefore ambitious and represents a clear endorsement of all but a few of the Taskforce’s 47 recommendations. Much will, as you'd expect, depend on the speed of delivery and later policy and legislation to provide the detail and there is a lot of that to come! We will report on key milestones in the implementation of the recommendations in later blogs.

You don’t have to see it to believe it

In other news, this is an interesting example of the discharge of DCO Requirements process in action.

The East Anglia TWO Offshore Wind Farm Order was made in 2022 (see here). In January 2026, the developer (a subsidiary of ScottishPower Renewables) made a formal request to the Secretary of State (SoS) to discharge Requirement 34 of the Order.

Requirement 34 states that:

“34.—(1) No wind turbine generator forming part of the authorised development is permitted to rotate its rotor blades on its horizontal axis until the Secretary of State, having consulted with the Ministry of Defence, confirms satisfaction in writing that appropriate mitigation will be implemented and maintained for the life of the authorised development and that arrangements have been put in place with the Ministry of Defence to ensure that the approved mitigation is implemented.”

The Requirement was imposed because the wind farm has the potential, without mitigation, to affect the operation of an Air Defence Radar at RRH Neatishead (in fact it moved from RRH Trimingham to RRH Neatishead after the DCO was granted, but the project still impacted on the radar at its new location and Requirement 34 was not location specific, so still applied).

The reference to “appropriate mitigation” in Requirement 34 is defined as a Radar Mitigation Scheme (RMS) to prevent or remove any adverse effects on the air defence radar and the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) air surveillance and control operations.

When making its request to discharge Requirement 34, the Applicant did not include a copy of the RMS, which it said could not be shared due to the MoD’s confidentiality requirements. Instead, it relied on a letter (here) from the MoD which said:

“The MoD therefore recommends to the Secretary of State that he may consider himself to be in the position to approve the Air Defence Radar Mitigation Scheme and to inform East Anglia TWO Limited that Requirement 34 of the Consent has been satisfied”.

In a letter dated 6 March 2026 (here), the SoS confirmed it was satisfied that it was reasonable to rely on the MoD’s position without needing to see the scheme itself. This was despite the SoS (here and here) previously asking for a copy or alternatively a description of the nature of the mitigation secured and saying it would not publish anything that was confidential.

Quite an interesting example of some of the issues that can arise in the post-consent stage, when discharging DCO requirements. It’s not always that easy to find published examples, particularly if the discharging authority is a local authority where the documents don’t tend to be published. The outcome in this case was obviously influenced by the sensitive context. Perhaps there is a lesson in the drafting, though. The Applicant (rightly) pointed out that Requirement 34 does not require submission of the RMS to the SoS for approval; it’s enough for the SoS, following consultation with the MoD, to be satisfied that mitigation will be implemented. Here, the MoD’s confirmation was therefore sufficient.

Finally, the consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework closed on 10 March. The Office for Environmental Protection’s (OEP) response (here) is worth a read. The OEP’s comments on strengthening the language of the NPPF around the application of the Protected Landscape duty are noteworthy given the Government’s response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review. Will the Government take the opportunity, via the NPPF updates, to clarify that the Protected Landscape duty does not require financial compensation to be paid by developers in the context of applications where the NPPF is the primary policy document (the proposed change to LURA identified in the Government’s response is only stated to apply to NSIP developers)?

This publication is intended for general guidance and represents our understanding of the relevant law and practice as at March 2026. Specific advice should be sought for specific cases. For more information see our terms & conditions.

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