In an overhaul of legal rules which allow three High Court challenges, the government said "unarguable cases" are "causing years of delay and hundreds of millions of cost to projects that have been approved by democratically elected ministers, while also clogging up the courts".
Government data reveals that 58% of all decisions on major infrastructure since 2012 were taken to court, with each legal challenge taking on average around a year and a half to be resolved, with many delayed for two years or more.
The courts have also spent more than 10,000 working days handling these cases.
The government points to offshore wind farms in East Anglia, Sizewell C nuclear power station, and the A47 national highway project as schemes delayed for years by ultimately unsuccessful judicial reviews.
Under the changes, the current first attempt, known as the paper permission stage, will be scrapped. Primary legislation will be changed so that when a judge in an oral hearing at the High Court deems a case "totally without merit", campaigners will not be allowed to ask the Court of Appeal to reconsider.
However "a request to appeal second attempt" will be allowed for other cases.
Starmer said the changes would "take the brakes off Britain" and send a message to businesses to build more national infrastructure.
He said: "For too long, blockers have had the upper hand in legal challenges – using our court processes to frustrate growth".
"We’re putting an end to this challenge culture by taking on the NIMBYs and a broken system that has slowed down our progress as a nation".
The overhaul follows an independent review into legal challenges against national significant infrastructure projects by Lord Banner last year which recommended streamlining judicial reviews.
"In the course of my review, I saw broad consensus from claimants to scheme promoters that a quicker system of justice would be in their interests, provided that cases can still be tried fairly,” said Banner. “I am therefore pleased to see the government acting on the back of my review. In particular, reducing the number of permission attempts to one for truly hopeless cases should weed out the worst offenders, without risking inadvertent delays because judges choose to err on the side of caution".
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