From transport to housing, planning will play a critical part in solving many of the challenges involved in transforming how we live and cutting carbon emissions. 

In January 2025, the Welsh Government consulted on how to improve ‘performance and resilience’ in planning services. At Nesta, we believe this is a rare opportunity to reform planning priorities and align them with Wales’ net zero goals. We also think this will help create efficiencies for a sector grappling with capacity and cost issues.

Whilst we need to cut carbon emissions across society, Nesta’s focus is the decarbonisation of home heating – currently 11% of Wales’ carbon emissions. We believe the best way to do this is for households to transition from gas boilers to heat pumps, the most feasible low carbon technology for large scale adoption.

But the current planning system is holding back consumers from installing a heat pump, adding complexity and costs to the adoption process.

Given the Welsh Government’s target of installing 580,000 heat pumps by 2035, removing obstacles to making heat pumps an affordable and easy to adopt solution should be of prime concern.

At the moment, the journey to becoming a heat pump owner is anything but simple – and the current planning rules don’t help.

In addition to weighing up the pros and cons of different models, financing the costs and finding an installer, many homeowners also face the unnecessarily complex task of having to obtain planning approval.

We think that the planning process could be reformed to make it much easier for households to install a heat pump.

Following on from the Welsh Government’s commitment to publishing revised regulations for planning rights by the end of 2025, we’re proposing three simple planning policies that could support Wales’ clean heat future - and we’re calling on the Welsh Government to commit to them now to accelerate the transition.

This is perhaps the single most effective and cost-free way to accelerate heat pump uptake in Wales right now.

Many domestic heat pumps fall within the category of permitted development rights (PDR), meaning UK homeowners do not need to make a planning application. 

However, what this category means varies depending on whether you’re in England, Wales or Scotland.

Currently, Wales has some of the most restrictive requirements: requiring planning permission to locate a heat pump within 3 metres of a property’s boundary. This sets Wales apart from other nations, including Scotland, where no restriction is placed on distance, and England, where the UK government has announced the end of the 1-metre distance rule.

In 2023, around 5,800 heat pumps were installed in Wales. The location of these new heat pumps might give us a clue as to the limiting effect these planning rules are having and how they might be restricting who can opt for clean heat. We found that urban postcodes lag behind rural ones in Wales, suggesting that planning rules might be pushing up the minimum garden space needed, proving an obstacle for heat pump adoption.

The 3-metre rule may also further penalise homeowners in Wales as there is evidence that installers deprioritise installations that do not qualify for permitted development rights. 

The 3-metre rule was originally intended to assuage concerns around noise disruption to neighbours, but this distance has now been proven to be inaccurate and overly restrictive. In fact, evidence commissioned by Nesta shows that moving heat pumps closer to a fence may reduce their noise by 1-3 dB, alleviating the impact on neighbours rather than worsening it.

The Heat Strategy for Wales commits to lifting ‘unnecessary planning constraints’. As the UK government has recently committed to removing the 1-metre planning rule in England, we would like to see the Welsh Government follow suit. Doing so will remove administrative bottlenecks, streamline many households’ heat pump adoption journey and alleviate local authorities’ workload, speeding up decarbonisation.

The Welsh Government has already announced its intention to revise permitted development rights: it should use this opportunity to fast-track heat pump adoption by removing the 3-metre planning rule.

Cost is often cited as the top barrier preventing households from installing a heat pump. Beside the costs of the heat pump itself and its installation, planning rules are also contributing to driving up the amount households have to spend. 

Householder planning applications currently cost £230 in Wales and the Welsh Government recently consulted on increasing this to £585 to achieve full cost recovery – a 150% increase, regardless of technology. The consultation also proposed a lower fee of £85 for some heat pumps located outside, but not attached to a property.

We think this blanket increase would significantly impact the affordability of any heat pump installation that requires planning permission, and deter potential adopters. It would place Welsh planning costs far above the norm in other nations, with England currently charging £258 and Scotland £300 for existing dwellings. This is an unnecessary obstacle on the way to achieving Wales’ legally binding carbon reduction targets.

Whether a heat pump is attached to a wall or a roof should not impact the cost of the planning application. Doing so would also risk pushing homeowners to get a heat pump installed in the wrong location for their house in order to avoid a higher fee, leading to poor experiences. Instead, the Welsh Government should consider extending a lower fee to all ASHP to avoid penalising households and accelerate the transition to low-carbon heat, in line with the climate emergency.

The Welsh Government should align its planning policy and net-zero goals, and scrap cost increases for planning applications for ASHP that fall outside planning development rights.

There’s anecdotal evidence that planning departments may face both a capacity and skills gap when assessing applications for low-carbon and district heating technologies.

The current Welsh Government and its successors should make upskilling planners in this area a priority to support their net-zero targets, including by considering the creation of planning hubs to allow for peer support and knowledge-sharing around low-carbon heat.

Planning is a strategic skill at the intersection of many sectors closely connected with Wales’ net-zero future. Alleviating planning burdens by supporting the planning workforce should be at the core of the Welsh Government’s priorities.

Nesta is currently doing work into the skills needed to help accelerate heat pump uptake and would welcome talking to organisations interested in driving progress in this area in Wales.

We think the Welsh Government could help achieve its dual objectives of a highly performing planning sector and net-zero emissions by making these small changes to the system. Unlike fraught issues such as pylons or wind turbines, these reforms would be incredibly uncontroversial and simple tweaks – but they will play a big part in creating the conditions for higher levels of heat pump adoption.