From gridlock to growth: cities need more planning powers

Pension Insurance Corporation plc ('PIC'), a specialist insurer of defined benefit pension schemes, has today called for planning reform to be led by major regional cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, as well as other mayoralties, where faster approvals could help unlock stalled redevelopment, housing, and infrastructure projects.

Cities such as Manchester and Birmingham have the demand, transport links, brownfield sites and institutional investment appetite to support major new housing and infrastructure schemes, but too many projects are delayed or made unviable by uncertainty at the start of the process. Singapore operates a streamlined, effective planning system under constraints like major British cities: limited land and high labour and materials costs.

The report further recommends that every UK regulator is benchmarked against its best peers globally. This would allow them to fast-track services and products that these foreign regulators have already approved. The UK’s current risk averse regulatory system is loading avoidable cost and delay onto the UK economy.

HM Treasury estimates there are over 100 bodies involved in UK regulation with overlapping mandates. They have little incentive to deregulate. Under PIC's proposal, each UK regulator would nominate one or more world-leading "peer regulators", selected as best-in-class against independent criteria. UK regulators would track those peers' decisions and report quarterly on how their and the UK’s approaches compare. For areas where no equivalent foreign regulator exists, the report suggests questioning whether the UK needs that regulator at all.

Critically, PIC calls for a fast-track approval process: where a trusted peer regulator has already approved a product or service, it should be considered for near-automatic sign-off in the UK. This is already in place with highly sensitive sectors, through the MHRA's International Recognition Procedure for medicines and a recent memorandum of understanding between the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Such a model would also change regulators' incentives by giving them cover to back pro-growth decisions by pointing to the approach of the best regulators in the world, and shifting the debate from “something must be done”, to “why are other countries doing this better?”

Hayley Rees, Managing Director of PIC Capital, said: “As a long-term investor PIC wants to fund the energy, housing, and infrastructure Britain needs, but there are not enough viable projects coming through. The quickest way to show reform works is to start in places like Manchester and Birmingham, where redevelopment can support local growth and create visible benefits for communities. Planning delays and the huge costs related to them are a major barrier. We should learn from what works in countries such as Singapore and help deliver a pipeline of projects that allow more investment in the infrastructure the country needs.”

The pension risk transfer ('PRT') market, of which PIC is a leading player, is expected to take on up to £600 billion of defined benefit pension scheme assets over the next decade, with around £200 billion of this available for UK infrastructure investment. PIC is a long-term investor in UK infrastructure because these assets provide the secure, long-term cashflows needed to match payments to PIC’s policyholders over coming decades. PIC has invested £15 billion in UK housing and infrastructure to date.

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Notes to Editors:

1. Singapore completes construction permit approvals roughly 59% faster for this one part of the process for which we have comparable data. Construction permit approvals are the final technical authorisation to start a building as opposed to the whole planning and consent stage of the process. The 59% reduction applied to the 18-month UK planning and consent window, produces a time saving of roughly 10.5 months per project.

2. Research was based on an average construction cost of £206,250 per home, a streamlined Singapore-style planning process applied to just the planning and consent stage could deliver savings of £18,167 per home.

Media enquiries:
Chelsey Wheeler – Public Relations – Senior Manager
Wheeler@pensioncorporation.com
+44 (0)7586 686414

About PIC
The purpose of PIC is to pay the pensions of its current and future policyholders. PIC provides secure retirement incomes through comprehensive risk management and excellence in asset and liability management, as well as exceptional customer service. At half year 2026, PIC had fully secured the pensions of 432,900 people, and had a portfolio of £54.4 billion, accumulated through the provision of tailored pension insurance buyouts and buy-ins to the trustees and sponsors of UK defined benefit pension schemes. PIC has made total pension payments of almost £21 billion to its policyholders, with a 99% customer satisfaction rating. PIC has invested more than £15 billion in private investments to date including in UK housing and infrastructure, creating considerable social value. Clients include FTSE 100 companies, multinationals and the public sector. PIC is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority (FRN 454345). For further information please visit www.pensioncorporation.com