Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026
House of Commons · General Committees · 30 Jun 2026 · 57 speeches · Official Report
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chair: † Sir Desmond Swayne
† Amos, Gideon (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
† Bacon, Gareth (Orpington) (Con)
† Baker, Richard (Glenrothes and Mid Fife) (Lab)
† Cocking, Lewis (Broxbourne) (Con)
† Costigan, Deirdre (Lord Commissioner of His Majesty's Treasury)
† Curtis, Chris (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)
† Dalton, Ashley (West Lancashire) (Lab)
Dinenage, Dame Caroline (Gosport) (Con)
Farron, Tim (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
† Foster, Mr Paul (South Ribble) (Lab)
† Grady, John (Glasgow East) (Lab)
† Hall, Sarah (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)
† Newbury, Josh (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
† Nichols, Charlotte (Warrington North) (Lab)
† Pennycook, Matthew (Minister for Housing and Planning)
† Simmonds, David (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
† Vince, Chris (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
Jack Edwards, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
The following also attended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(2):
Hinchliff, Chris (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee
Tuesday 30 June 2026
[Sir Desmond Swayne in the Chair ]
Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026
I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. The regulations were laid before the House on 1 June and, following a minor correction, re-laid on 8 June. In considering this instrument today we are not debating the principle of modernising planning committees. The enabling powers for these regulations are contained in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which was subject to extensive scrutiny by both Houses and approved by them. Before I turn to the detail of the regulations, it is important to set out the extensive consultation and engagement that we have undertaken on these measures. As Committee members may recall, the commitment to improve local planning decision making by modernising planning committees was made in the King’s Speech 2024. Following that announcement, we published a planning reform working paper on planning committees that set out a range of proposals, including three options in respect of a national scheme of delegation designed to bring greater standardisation over the operation of committees and give greater certainty to applicants. Taking into account the valuable feedback we received to that working paper, three measures were introduced to the Planning and Infrastructure Act. The first gives a new power to the Secretary of State to set out which planning functions...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for, I think, the first time, Sir Desmond. I welcome the opportunity to address the statutory instrument on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition and I thank the Minister for his detailed opening remarks. At the outset I state that it is our intention to divide the Committee on the SI. Notwithstanding that, I am aware of the political balance of the Committee and the Government are likely to carry the day, so I have some comments and questions for the Minister. As I said in a Delegated Legislation Committee two weeks ago, “The Planning and Infrastructure Act was a mammoth undertaking” -[ Official Report, Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee, 17 June 2026; c. 4.] . It is therefore no surprise to be back again debating regulations relating to the Act. In that Committee I raised some of the Opposition’s important and long-held concerns about local democracy. This SI may be about the planning system on paper, but the core of the changes it seeks to make strike at the heart of future local democratic voices and their ability to scrutinise planning applications. As I did two weeks ago, I am keen to make plain once again the Opposition’s firm view that we must get Britain building. There is broad consensus among the Government and the Opposition that this must happen, albeit with differences as to how it should happen. Still, that is better than the purely nimby sentiments expressed by some minor opposition parties. Where the...
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I would like to make a couple of additional points, adding to the really important comments made by the Minister about why these changes are important. It is worth dwelling on the fact that housing in this country is prohibitively expensive for too many people. That is the reason why people are increasingly having to wait so long to get on the housing ladder. Fundamentally, housing is too expensive because, first, there is not enough of it and, secondly, increasingly it is too expensive to build new housing units. If we want to bring the cost of housing down, we have to address those two problems. We have to increase the number of new homes that are built, but also decrease the cost of building them. On the latter, increasing global pressures, from supply chain disruptions to the impact of geopolitical events, are pushing up construction and labour costs. Most of those headwinds are outside our control, but when we have difficult headwinds it is even more important that we do everything we can with the levers that are within our control to bring down the cost of construction. I mention that because one of the most damaging, self-inflicted and unnecessary costs in our current house building system is uncertainty. Right now, there could be companies out there-including developers, housing associations or, as the shadow Minister said, local councils-that are looking to build new homes. They could be doing...
There is a strong corelation between the hon. Gentleman’s argument and our position. I agree with much of what he has said, but I cannot get away from the ratio that both the Minister and I have outlined in our speeches: 96% of planning applications are already decided by officers under delegated powers. Is the hon. Gentleman’s position that democracy is the inhibitor here? Is democracy introducing uncertainty into the system? If that is the case, he should say so.
I do not believe that democracy is changing it. It is fundamentally the incentives of certain local politicians to do this when they can have a veto power over a development that has a wider gain, often outside their local constituencies. That is a wider consequence. I am democratically elected, as is the shadow Minister, so in this sovereign Parliament we have the ability and right to set the rules under which that democracy operates.
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. Does he not agree that that is the reason for the existence of the Planning Inspectorate? If planning applications are refused for reasons that are not in accordance with planning policy, will they not be overturned by the Planning Inspectorate?
I thank the shadow Minister for making that point because it was the last point I was going to briefly make before wrapping up. This is the key point: it adds not only uncertainty, but delays. If uncertainty has costs in the housing system, the developers might go to the Planning Inspectorate, but that adds extra delay and costs. Most of the developments in schedule 1 are very small-often up to just 10 properties. The margins that a developer would make on that project are much smaller than the costs of that delay and of having to go to the Planning Inspectorate in the first place. That means that most developments across the country have effectively stopped construction altogether. The big consequence of that is that SME builders, particularly those in local communities who have generally been building smaller sized developments, are going under. One of the only ways to fix that is by bringing certainty back into the system, given that uncertainty is one of the reasons why they have been facing challenges.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I have taken up too much time; people really want to get off. We all accept that we should be focusing on smaller sites because, as the Minister set out, the bigger sites should be decided and focused on by the planning committees. This measure will free up more of their time to focus on those bigger sites and issues. However, schedule 1 sets the size of small sites at nine properties or fewer, which I think is at the lower end of people’s expectations. I appreciate that the Minister has done lots of consultation work on the draft regulations, but given that just 69% of the properties built each year would fall into that category, can he please give us some information on how he has settled on that number? Will he consider raising that number in future, if he is convinced that it would lead to more benefit and more good-quality homes being constructed?
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. The only certainty that consigning applications to officers will bring is a greater certainty of refusal. Officers refuse a greater proportion of planning applications than planning committees, which is not an argument in favour of the draft regulations.
To prove that point, the hon. Gentleman would need to prove that the types of applications currently going to either officers or planning committees are effectively random, but they are not. We know that different types of applications go to each one, so we cannot make that comparison between the two numbers.
I will give two examples that have a bearing on the hon. Gentleman’s point momentarily. The Liberal Democrats have supported elements of the Government’s reforms. We supported the housing measures in the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, and we support the principle of strategic planning. We also have no objection to a standard scheme of delegation or an upper limit on the size of planning committees. However, we do not accept that decisions must-the word “must” is used several times in the draft regulations-be taken away from elected councillors such that councils will approve decisions in cases where every single councillor disagrees, and the council’s name will still be on that decision. How can that be just? How can that be right? The delivery of new homes is important. In particular, our target for social homes is higher than the Government’s, as we would aspire to deliver 150,000 per year, and we would allocate funding in that direction. Many of the measures that the Government are bringing forward seem to be directed at increasing planning permissions, largely for private sector housing, which many people in my constituency cannot and will not be able to afford. There is also little evidence that increasing planning permissions will reduce house prices-in fact, that has never happened, and it never will. Of course, house builders work on a commercial model in which they need to sustain their price to make their profit, which is an entirely reasonably approach. Recent other...
Like the hon. Gentleman, I have previously been a local councillor, so I understand the importance of planning committees and of local democracy around planning decisions, but I find the idea that local councillors will have no ability to have any say or influence over officers’ delegated decisions a bit ludicrous. If a councillor is doing their job properly, they are constantly going to the planning department to speak to officers about various issues that are raised with them. It will be more than possible for councillors to speak to planning officers, knowing that they are to make a decision on something like this, to give them whatever local context they feel they would need to come to an informed decision. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree with that?
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the importance of close working between councillors and officers, and I do not deny it, but the planning committees and the national scheme of delegation consultation outcome document is crystal clear, and I am grateful to him for allowing me the opportunity to quote it. It says in paragraph 17: “Nominated officers and nominated members should make every effort to reach agreement on which cases should be referred to committee.” Of course, that is only in schedule 2 applications; in schedule 1 applications, there is no opportunity for councillors to have a word with the officers and have the application referred to committee, but in schedule 2 applications there would be. The consultation outcome document goes on to state: “However, where agreement is not possible, the case must be delegated to officers under regulation 5(3).” The questions raised by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Orpington, about whether officers will be required to prepare the same registers of interest and to be subject to the same degree of openness and accountability that councillors have to have are well put. In our view, the draft regulations dangerously undermine democratic accountability-in fact, they remove it altogether-and leave the way open for those who will say, “It doesn’t matter how you vote or what you think-it has no effect.” The regulations will extend that principle to councillors and their powers: it does not matter what they...
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. This is a hugely consequential instrument. Little democracy remains in our planning system, and this legislation will cut the amount down further. We are elected to this place to serve the public, not treat them as a problem to be silenced. The measures will mean that individual councillors lose the ability to directly call in planning decisions completely, and that democratically elected councillors get to publicly scrutinise and vote on planning decisions only in exceptional circumstances, even for schedule 2 applications. With no committees for the vast majority of decisions, they will also mean that the public lose their chance to speak for a few minutes in front of those deciding on what gets built and where in their local area. In effect, in many circumstances, they will render our constituents and their locally elected representatives bystanders in the future of their own community. The measures seem to directly contradict Labour’s historic mission to redistribute power, not to mention the current drive for devolution and putting decision-making power back in local hands. Streamlining our processes, in my view, cannot justify to my constituents the loss of their voice through these measures. I fear that the case for these changes relies overwhelmingly on anecdote and the belief that locally elected councillors are too responsive to the hopes and concerns of those they represent, and that by taking...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I have great respect for the Minister. I hope that he remains in post or gets a promotion in the upcoming reshuffle. I did not plan to speak today but, although I have heard some good points made in this Committee, I have also heard some nonsense. This is a terrible idea: I do not think a national scheme of delegation will work across the country. It puts too much power in the hands of planning officers, who do not always get it right. We often fail to talk about how we have to create communities, but when someone makes a bad planning decision, that building is there for generations. There are issues that should be thought about within the planning process, and they will be difficult to solve if an officer has recommended the approval or refusal of a specific application and they have got it wrong. Officers are less likely to live within the council area, so they are less likely to know the place as well as councillors. Councillors should be around that table and should be able to call in planning applications. Lots of councils do have a scheme of delegation, but it is important that they retain flexibility, because there will be certain applications where local circumstances apply. For example, an application for a house may have to be called in because there are specific issues down a road, or because lots of people have replied to the consultation. Councils need to have that flexibility. The national scheme...
I knew that this instrument would provoke strong feelings, and it has done so, but I very much welcome the scrutiny provided by hon. Members and the considered contributions they have made. The first thing to say is that a principled case has been advanced-as it was during the Planning and Infrastructure Bill-from members of the Committee who do not believe that a national scheme of delegation is warranted in any way. We have heard some of those arguments today, but, quite frankly, the time for those arguments has passed; the Act containing the enabling powers for these regulations passed both Houses after extensive scrutiny. We are talking about the form that the regulations take in implementing the national scheme of delegation, and we have undertaken extensive consultation and engagement to try to get the balance right in terms of the two-tier system we are introducing. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington, put a number of questions to me. The first touched on the rationale for the regulations in a fundamental way. As I said, we recognise the important role that planning committees play in ensuring local democratic oversight, and they will continue, once the regulations have passed-if they pass-to play a crucial role in planning decision making in the future. Across the country, we have a plethora of local schemes of delegation with huge variation, and that postcode lottery of schemes of delegation creates uncertainty. It slows down the planning system in...
The Minister is being generous in giving way. As he knows, we fundamentally disagree with these proposals. He has just illustrated the point that councillors will be reduced to the same role as members of the public: they may make representations, but that is it.
And we think that is right on schedule 1 applications. They are a very different proposition from schedule 2 applications, which we think members should be able to take a view on through the gateway test.
The Minister mentions local plans and schemes of delegation. If a developer comes forward with a planning application that is not allocated within the local plan, how will that be dealt with? Will it be deal with through schemes of delegation, or would it automatically go to committee?
That is a fair question. As I set out in my opening remarks, if such an application were to meet the conditions in schedule 2, it would go in front of the chief planning officer, in most instances, and the chair of the planning committee, and a gateway test would determine whether it meets the criteria that I have set out. If it does, the local authority can put the decision in front of elected members, as happens now with an officer recommendation, so we are not changing that. I have listed the types of application that fall under schedule 1: minor residential development under 10 units, minor commercial development and so on. There might be a principled difference of opinion here, which I respect, but we do think that expert planning officers should be able to take decisions on those matters. The hon. Member for Orpington challenged me on the impact of the fact that 96% are already not determined by committee. In a sense, he was saying, “What’s the point of these regulations, given that we have local schemes of delegation doing the job?” As highlighted in the impact assessment for these reforms to the Planning and Infrastructure Act, we expect these reforms to have a small but positive impact on the delivery of housing in this Parliament. We have never suggested that they are a silver bullet for all the issues that we face in the planning system. The Act’s impact assessment covered a number of options, including our lead option of delegating when applications are in line...
The Minister is being very generous in giving way. I understand his point that the 4% of applications contain a significant number of units, but does he have a figure for that? How many extra units will be granted planning permission as a result of this change?
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the comments that I have just made. The impact assessment for the Act was published on the basis of a particular scenario, which we have modified. We need to update the impact assessment and we will do so in due course so that he has a better sense of the impact. The impact is tangible and real, in terms of what can go through schedule 2. We also anticipate that it will mean less time and resource spent on preparing for committee meetings for smaller applications in schedule 1, so it will speed up the decision-making process more broadly and free up important officer time to focus on larger applications that have a real impact on housing delivery. Several hon. Members mentioned councillors’ ability to call in applications, which we are removing. The regulations do not require local authorities to put every schedule 2 application through the gateway test. It will be for individual local planning authorities to put in place their own arrangements for how the consideration of cases for referral to committee will operate in practice. In other words, it will be open to individual LPAs to triage their schedule 2 applications in ways that are appropriate for them so that only certain schedule 2 applications are considered by the nominated officer and member. Under those arrangements, it would be open to a local planning authority to include a mechanism for councillors to ask for applications that fall under schedule 2 to be considered under the gateway...
Is that not potentially reintroducing the same level of discretion and difference across the country if local planning authorities choose to use those powers in different ways?
I do not believe so, because local planning authority schemes must adhere to planning regulations and meet the gateway test-in the sense of what can pass a committee-and the statutory guidance to which they must have regard. In a sense, we want to ensure that applications passing through the gateway and considered by committees are larger, complex and more controversial cases, and that less significant applications are determined by planning officers. That leads me to the legal obligations on officers. In a sense, the question has been put to me, “Can we trust local planning officers to make these decisions?” I must make it clear that officers working for local authorities are bound by strict requirements in the way they make decisions on applications. They must, by law, take all material considerations into account, including relevant parts of a local plan-that is why having an up-to-date local plan in place is so significant-and national planning policy. The law also requires their decisions to be rational. Planning officers’ actions must adhere to codes of conduct, be they those of the local planning authority or of the professional institutes to which they belong. Taken together, we think that these measures provide strong safeguards to underpin the integrity of decisions.
The Minister is being very generous with his time. How can the public deal with planning officers who get it wrong? At the moment, if a planning committee gets it wrong, the public can go out to the ballot box and vote for someone else. They cannot do that with planning officers who make the wrong decisions.
Planning officers routinely make decisions without applications going to committee. We trust them to do so; they are bound by the requirements that I have just set out. The hon. Member touches on a point that I was going to come to. It is important to ensure that we have a highly skilled planning profession and the right training and support in place for officers. We are investing in good decision making by planning officers in councils across the country. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Department has a planning capacity and capability programme that provides a broad range of support covering recruitment, skills, development, training and funding to ensure that local planning authorities have the capability and capacity that they need. Our approach to supporting planning recruitment and skills is deliberately demand-led, allowing local planning authorities to deploy support in line with their specific pressures. As he will know, councils have the flexibility to use support to recruit specialist skills or to upskill existing staff. To ensure that I respond to all questions, I will make two final points. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington, asked about instances in which the local authority is the decision maker or a local authority member is involved. I addressed that in my opening remarks, but it is worth clarifying again. We recognise that, for applications involving a local authority or an officer or member of that authority, committee scrutiny is...
Resolved ,
That the Committee has considered the draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026.
Committee rose.