Section 9 – Coming into force
230.Section 9 makes provision about when and how the Act comes into force.
231.This section provides for sections 2, 4 and 7, together with Schedules 1 and 2, to come into force two months after Royal Assent (in other words, on 10 September 2025). However, this is subject to section 9(3). Paragraph 22(2) of Schedule 1 to this Act amends section 1(1) of the Planning and Energy Act 2008, which is also amended by paragraph 29(2) of Schedule 8 to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, which is not yet in force(26). The amendment to section 1(1) in paragraph 22(2)(a)(i) of Schedule 1 of this Act will only be needed once the 2023 Act amendment is in force. Therefore, for the legislation to work correctly, section 7(3) of this Act provides that the amendment made by paragraph 22(2)(a)(i) will only come into force with the rest of Schedule 1 if the 2023 Act amendment is already in force at that time. Otherwise, the amendment made by the Act will come into force at the same time as the 2023 Act amendment.
232.This section (section 9) and section 10 came into force on 11 July 2025, the day after the Act received Royal Assent.
233.The remaining provisions of the Act will be brought into force by one or more orders to be made by the Welsh Ministers. It is expected that the order will bring Parts 1 and 2 fully into force at the start of a calendar year, so that it is possible to tell from the year included in the title of an instrument whether it is a Welsh statutory instrument made in accordance with Part 2A of the 2019 Act (and the numbering and publication requirements of Part 2B of the 2019 Act apply to it) or a statutory instrument to which the 1946 Act applies. It will also ensure there is not a year in which there are two different series of instruments made by the Welsh Ministers (statutory instruments forming part of the series of UK statutory instruments, and Welsh statutory instruments forming part of the Welsh statutory instrument series). As such the first and subsequent series of Welsh statutory instruments will each begin at the start of a calendar year and will cover complete years.
234.It is also expected that section 5 will be brought into force at the same time as Parts 1 and 2, and that section 6 will be brought into force for the start of the next Senedd (in May 2026).
The amendments in Schedule 8 to the 2023 Act relate to Chapter 2 of Part 3 of that Act, which introduce a new development plan system in England. The UK Government has said that it intends to implement the new system “from summer or autumn 2025”: see Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government consultation, “
