The duty is changing. The exposure isn’t.
Under the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, pre-application consultation on nationally significant projects is expected to cease being a statutory duty. The one stage where a community could still change a scheme becomes the promoter’s choice.
That looks like less to do. It may not be. The Gunning principles can still apply to any consultation a promoter chooses to run, and a legitimate expectation to consult can still arise where one has promised to consult or always has. In effect, applicants may be trading a defined statutory standard for an undefined common-law one, so a promoter who consults voluntarily and does it poorly can end up more exposed, not less. The formal right to be heard survives, but it moves to examination, after the application is in, where input can comment on a scheme but is far less able to shape it.
Local schemes carry a different but equally real risk: low-traffic neighbourhoods, cycle routes and parking changes have produced some of the most contested, and most litigated, consultations of recent years.
Which consent route are you consulting under?
Nationally significant projects
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 is expected to remove the statutory duty to consult before applying, with the acceptance stage no longer testing it. Consultation becomes the promoter’s choice, but Gunning and legitimate expectation can still apply to whatever you run, and the quality of engagement is still felt at examination. Less prescribed, not lower-stakes.
Transport & Works Act orders
For railways, tramways and certain waterway and harbour works. Prescribed publicity and consultation, with objections capable of triggering a public inquiry. Process precision is everything.
Highways & major road schemes
Side-road orders, compulsory purchase and scheme consultation under the Highways Act, where affected parties have defined rights to be consulted and to object.
Traffic orders & local schemes
Traffic Regulation Orders, low-traffic neighbourhoods and active-travel schemes. Legally lighter but politically explosive, and repeatedly tested in the courts on fairness and process.
The schemes that most often need support.
Different regimes, one shared need: consultation that stands up to formal scrutiny.
Stations & lines
New lines, station changes and level-crossing closures under TWA and related regimes.
Major roads
Bypasses, junctions and strategic road schemes from National Highways and local highway authorities, with compulsory purchase and access impacts.
LTNs & cycling
Low-traffic neighbourhoods and cycle routes, high-emotion schemes with a strong litigation record.
Energy & utilities
Generation, grid and pipeline projects consented as nationally significant infrastructure.
Airspace & airports
Airspace change and airport development, with their own CAA and planning consultation duties.
Water & flood
Reservoirs, flood defences and water infrastructure affecting large catchments and communities.
Independent, and proven where it counts.
We provide independent assurance and peer review on nationally significant and major transport consultations. With less of the standard now written down, that independent view is how a promoter shows the work was done well.
Two ways in: train your team, or assure the consultation.
Courses for scheme teams
Independent assurance
The infrastructure consultation checklist
A practical, plain-English checklist drawn from our assurance work, so you can pressure-test your next consultation against the standards that matter.
The judgments scheme promoters are read against.
Twenty-four judgments in our catalogue are tagged to transport, and the traffic scheme cases have become their own line of authority. Three that matter:
The first use of bus franchising powers. Where a statute prescribes an assessment, an independent audit and then a consultation, each step has to be completed and documented in sequence. Decisions of this scale survive on process discipline.
The Court of Appeal took the equality ground on low traffic neighbourhoods, granted because proliferating cases needed guidance. The appeal was dismissed, but read it with Bouchti before relying on urgency.
The Streetspace Plan and Interim Guidance to Boroughs. The Court of Appeal allowed TfL’s appeal at the strategic level, leaving the challenge to individual schemes as they came forward.
Infrastructure consultation, answered.
Has the Planning and Infrastructure Act changed pre-application consultation?
Yes. For nationally significant projects, the Act removes the statutory duty to carry out pre-application consultation, and the acceptance stage will no longer test its adequacy. That lowers the prescription, not necessarily the risk. Any consultation a promoter chooses to run is still expected to meet the common-law Gunning principles, a legitimate expectation to consult can still arise from a promise or an established practice, and the quality of engagement remains visible at examination. Trading a defined standard for an undefined one is not the same as removing it.
Why are low-traffic neighbourhoods and traffic schemes so often challenged?
Traffic schemes affect people's daily lives directly and immediately, which drives strong feeling on all sides. Legally the process can be lighter than major infrastructure, but that makes procedural care more important, not less: challenges typically turn on whether consultation was fair, whether the decision was pre-determined, and whether responses genuinely shaped the outcome.
When should assurance start on an infrastructure consultation?
As early as possible, ideally while the consultation strategy is still being written. Because a consultation tends to be judged on what you actually did, not on what you later say you meant, the value of assurance is greatest before it runs, when risks can be designed out, and while it runs, when the evidence is being created. Retrofitting a defence after the event is far weaker.
Can you work alongside our planning and legal advisers?
Yes. We complement rather than replace scheme, planning and legal teams. Our role is the independent view on consultation practice specifically, giving promoters and authorities confidence that this element will hold up, and giving examiners contemporaneous evidence that it was done properly.
Consultation that holds up, with or without a duty.
Tell us about your scheme and its consent route. With the statutory duty falling away, we will help you run one you can stand behind, at examination and in court.