Building our nuclear nation: The Government’s response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025

On the 13 March 2026, the government published Building Our Nuclear Nation, its response to the 47 recommendations of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce. The Taskforce’s November 2025 report called for a “radical reset” of nuclear regulation, warning that the current system has made the UK one of the most expensive places to build nuclear.

The government says it has accepted the principle of all 47 recommendations, but the response makes clear that some will not be taken forward exactly as proposed and, in some cases, will instead be addressed through alternative measures.  Where legislation is required, the government will bring it forward as soon as practicable and before the end of 2027, subject to parliamentary timings. Where legislation is pending, interim measures will be put in place to provide early benefits to the sector.

While the Taskforce focused on nuclear regulation, the government has also set out broader planning and environmental reform. The document describes its proposals as “another step on this government’s path towards a radical reworking of our planning system that delivers for the whole economy.”

What follows is our summary of the government’s response, focusing on the measures most likely to have the greatest practical impact for nuclear and other major infrastructure projects. It does not seek to address every proposal in the response but instead highlights the reforms most likely to affect planning, environmental assessment and delivery in practice.

Nuclear-specific reforms

Siting and fleet rollout (Recommendations 32–34). The current planning framework treats each nuclear project as novel and has been criticised for adding time and cost. To address this, National Policy Statement EN-7 will be updated within 12 months, subject to parliamentary scrutiny, to support fleet rollout — allowing developers to build on standardisation and repeated application of proven designs (Recommendation 32).

The pool of available sites is also being widened: the Semi-Urban Population Criterion will be revised to open up more suitable sites for all reactor classes, including SMRs and AMRs (Recommendation 33), and emergency planning zones will be updated on a risk-proportionate basis (Recommendation 34).

Post-consent and environmental (Recommendations 12 and 30). Post-consent discharge of DCO requirements currently involves multiple bodies, which can delay the move from consent to construction. DESNZ will establish a new unit within its Infrastructure Planning Delivery team to consolidate this process, initially for nuclear power and electricity network projects, with a view to extending to other energy projects if evaluation supports expansion (Recommendation 30).

On the environmental side, developers currently face years of project-specific ecological surveys and bespoke mitigation. Environmental Delivery Plans will instead allow developers to make a single payment to discharge environmental obligations (Recommendation 12).

Justification (Recommendation 35). The government will also work with Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE–N) to secure early regulatory justification for all light water reactors and then streamline the route for other reactor classes.

General planning reforms

HRA and EIA (Recommendations 11 – 15). The current Habitats Regulations Assessment process has been criticised for requiring developers to revisit assessments and account for hypothetical risks. The government will legislate so that mitigation can be taken account of earlier in the HRA process and will issue guidance making clear that hypothetical risks should be excluded and assessments reused and issue guidance making clear that hypothetical risks should be excluded and assessments reused.

Separately, Environmental Outcomes Reports (EORs) will replace the EIA regime by December 2027, as part of what the government describes as a move towards a “more strategic, outcomes-based approach.” Once in place, EORs will reduce the burden of duplicative assessment at the project level, where appropriate upstream assessment has taken place.

Alongside this, the government has committed to identify opportunities by autumn 2026 to accelerate nuclear development through targeted deployment of Environmental Delivery Plans, and to identify and designate a zone for nuclear development using existing levers, including spatial planning, proactive environmental assessment and the Nature Restoration Fund where appropriate.

DCO and planning policy (Recommendations 24–28). A revised NPPF will build in a permanent “tilt” in favour of low-carbon energy (Recommendation 24). The DCO regime itself will be reformed across four areas:

• Streamlining the pre-application phase (Recommendation 25);
• Strengthening the Initial Assessment of Principal Issues to focus examinations on live issues (Recommendation 26);
• Encouraging greater use of “minded to” letters where ministerial decisions are delayed (Recommendation 27); and
• Modernising model provisions as a baseline for DCO drafting (Recommendation 28).

All of this will apply to NSIPs across the board.

Biodiversity, landscapes, and judicial review (Recommendations 18–21). The government will introduce a streamlined mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain framework for NSIPs, with details to follow in the government response to the 2025 BNG for NSIPs consultation. The aim is to ensure infrastructure can be delivered to schedule while still driving nature recovery (Recommendation 18).

The government will legislate to clarify that NSIP developers are not required to pay financial compensation to comply with the Protected Landscapes Duty (Recommendation 19).

Judicial review reforms will be extended from NSIPs to environmental permitting and nuclear site licensing (Recommendation 20), and the government will bring forward proposals for targeted indemnification for nuclear developers where planning consent is subject to judicial review (Recommendation 21).

Community benefits (Recommendation 36). The government has not accepted the recommendation that all community benefits should become material planning considerations. Instead, it will retain community benefits outside the planning regime, on the basis that bringing them within planning decisions could create new routes for legal challenge and reduce flexibility in tailoring benefits to what local communities want. The government will instead strengthen policy expectations on socioeconomic benefits within the NPS framework and consider any relevant changes to section 106 guidance, with the aim of updating EN-7 and publishing any relevant guidance within 12 months.

Key takeaways

There are three clear themes emerging in the government response:

1. Speed: Taken together, the reforms above represent an effort to strip out delay at every stage of the consenting lifecycle – from pre-application through to post-consent discharge.

2. Proportionality: A recurring thread is the push to refocus decision-making on real and material harm rather than theoretical risk. This should help avoid duplication, reduce gold-plated assessments, and bring a more pragmatic discipline to environmental and planning processes.

3. Delivery: The government is not just proposing reform – it is putting in place structures to ensure these changes are followed through. The Nuclear Regulatory Implementation Panel will provide monitoring, scrutiny and accountability for delivery of the recommendations.

If the government delivers on all of the recommendations that it is indicating it will address, and affects change at regulatory, guidance and behavioural levels, there can be little doubt that this will collectively amount to a major overhaul of existing consenting regimes.  That will apply not just to nuclear developments, but across the development spectrum.

If you have any questions about the government’s response or want to discuss what these reforms mean for your projects, please contact Alex Minhinick.