Has Reform become a party of YIMBYs? Luminate’s key takeaways from the 2026 Reform UK party conference

Conference season opened last week with Reform UK, meeting under a cloud of fresh allegations around fundraising. Business, Trade and Energy spokesperson Richard Tice used the platform to set out what housing, energy, and development policy could look like in Reform's first 100 days in office – policy caught between two audiences: the push to cut regulation and accelerate development vs a growing rural vote for the party with NIMBY instincts. The result is a set of proposals trying to satisfy both.

• Deregulation: Drawing on his background in property development, Tice pledged to remove building regulation on brownfield and town centre sites, with Section 106, the Community Infrastructure Levy, and Biodiversity Net Gain requirements all destined for the chop.  

• Affordability: Affordable housing requirements would shrink sharply in major cities and disappear entirely elsewhere.

• National planning: Planning policy would be set nationally, local plans reduced to geography only, and Spatial Development strategies will be abolished entirely.  

Crucially, the party also set out that it would “scrap housing targets” – a discouraging standpoint for those who see increased programme of housebuilding as a key plank of Britain’s growth strategy.

Reform will be consulting on these planning policies ahead of a full planning policy announcement in 2027.

On energy, the headline was a market-led approach: no new subsidies, including Contracts for Difference, and renewables required to carry their own infrastructure costs, including grid connections.

That's a partial retreat from Reform's earlier pledge to ban new onshore wind and solar and bury all new power lines underground — the emphasis has shifted from blocking renewables to pricing them out. Its recent "Renewables Eyesores" campaign suggests the party is still no closer to warming to the sector.

What it could mean for our clients

None of this is settled, but the direction of travel is worth watching as these conference pledges head into a 2027 consultation. Developers on brownfield and town-centre sites could see a genuinely lighter regulatory path if this became policy, while a weakened S106/CIL/BNG regime would strip out funding routes local authorities currently rely on and potentially causing real issues for community and stakeholder engagement work. All – however – would have to contend with a softening of the current Government’s position on overarching targets – something which will worry those who see this as a fundamental driver if both the plan-making and decision-making process around development.  

For renewables clients, self-funded grid connections and no new CfDs would hit project economics even without an outright ban, and "Renewables Eyesores" signals continued local-opposition risk regardless of the national policy tone. With a consultation still to come, there's a window for affected clients to shape this rather than just respond to it.

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