One of my responsibilities as a district councillor is keeping up with changes to planning law and local government.
Most of the time those changes attract little attention outside council offices. Occasionally something appears that deserves much wider scrutiny. Labour’s planning committee reforms fall into that category.
The consultation has closed. The Government has published its response and draft regulations. These proposals are no longer ideas being discussed in Whitehall. They are moving towards implementation.
At first glance, the changes sound reasonable enough. Ministers say they want to speed up planning decisions, reduce delays and allow planning committees to focus on the largest applications. Few people would object to that.
But after reading the consultation documents, the Government’s response and the draft regulations themselves, I do not think this is really a debate about efficiency. It is a debate about who gets to make decisions.
Imagine a planning application is submitted near your home. Perhaps it is a housing development. Perhaps it adds traffic to an already busy road. Perhaps it raises concerns about drainage, local services or infrastructure. Perhaps it changes the character of an area that people care deeply about.
You object. Your neighbours object. The parish council objects.
Most people would assume that an application attracting that level of local concern would be debated by elected councillors in public. Under Labour’s proposals, there is a good chance it would not be.
Many applications that councils can currently choose to refer to committee will instead be determined by planning officers. Even where an application remains eligible for committee consideration, it will only get there if a nominated councillor and a nominated officer agree that it should.
If they do not agree, officers make the decision. That may sound like a technical change. But, in practice, it reduces the ability of elected councillors to scrutinise applications that local communities care deeply about, whether they involve a handful of homes or hundreds.
Residents are often told that they can still submit comments. That remains true.
But anyone who has attended a planning committee meeting knows there is a difference between sending an objection through a website and seeing elected representatives question officers in public before casting a vote. Those two things are not the same.
Reading the Government’s response, there is one thing stood out immediately to me. Ministers talk about devolution, local leadership and giving communities a greater voice over the places where they live.
The consultation response praises planning committees for promoting public trust, transparency and democratic accountability. Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook described planning committees as providing “vital local democratic oversight”. On that, I am in agreement with him.
That is precisely why these reforms make so little sense.
If planning committees provide vital democratic oversight, why are fewer planning applications going to be decided by planning committees? If public trust matters, why move more decisions into delegated officer processes? If local voices matter, why make it harder for elected councillors to insist that controversial applications are debated openly? The Government has not provided a convincing answer to those questions.
The picture becomes clearer when you look at the wider direction of travel. The Prime Minister has spoken repeatedly about removing “blockers” from the planning system.
The Government says these reforms are needed to deliver more homes; and yet many residents already feel that the housing numbers imposed on districts such as Wealden are based on a national formula that bears little relation to local constraints, infrastructure capacity or environmental pressures. Targets are handed down from Whitehall. Councils are expected to find the land through magic. It is our communities however that are expected to absorb the consequences.
Then, when residents, parish councils and councillors ask difficult questions about roads, schools, drainage and local services, democratic scrutiny starts to look suspiciously like the next blocker that needs to be removed.
There is another question that ministers rarely answer:
If the objective is to increase housing delivery, why focus so heavily on reducing democratic scrutiny when many councils already have large numbers of homes with planning permission that remain unbuilt?
Wealden already has a substantial pipeline of approved housing. Much of it has yet to be delivered. The challenge is not always granting permission. Quite often it is getting development built. That raises an obvious question. If thousands of approved homes already exist within the planning system, how does reducing committee oversight solve the real problem? Most people will accept a decision they disagree with if they believe the process was fair.
They need to see questions asked. They need to see evidence tested. They need to see elected representatives held accountable for the decisions they make. Once confidence in the process is lost, it is difficult to rebuild (excuse the pun).
I sometimes think governments of every political colour become frustrated with local communities. Residents ask awkward questions. Parish councils challenge assumptions. Councillors ask for more information. That can slow things down but I would not descibe them as systemic flaws.
They are part of democratic accountability. The people who lose most from these reforms are not just councillors (although we all live here too).
They are the residents who spend hours reading planning applications, attending meetings and speaking up for their communities. They are the parish councillors who volunteer their time to represent local concerns. They are the people who care enough about where they live to get involved.
These reforms are not some distant proposal that may or may not happen. The consultation has been completed. The Government has published its response and draft regulations. Barring a change of course by ministers or Parliament, these changes are expected to come into force later this year.
As a district councillor, I find it troubling that public frustration with the planning system is being met with less public scrutiny rather than more. The people who live with the consequences of development should not be pushed further away from the process.
Wealden’s towns, villages and countryside will live with planning decisions for decades. The ministers promoting these reforms will not.
The Government says these changes are about efficiency. I think they reflect a view that planning decisions should be made by fewer people, more quickly and with less public challenge. That may suit ministers in Whitehall.
I do not believe it serves local democracy in Wealden; our residents or the future of our communities.
That is why I oppose them.
Sources
The consultation on these reforms has now concluded and the Government has published both its response and draft regulations.
People who wish to read the documents themselves can find them here:
• Planning Committee Reform Consultation:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-committee-reform-draft-regulations-and-guidance
I believe these reforms represent a substantial reduction in local democratic oversight of planning decisions. I would encourage anyone with an interest in how development is decided in Wealden to read the documents and form their own view.
2 responses to “Who Should Decide What Gets Built in Wealden?”
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Very well said…. The bottom line is that Central Government want to speed up the planning process to suit their own agenda of unwanted development without the involvement of local authority planning committees. Such committees, formed from elected members, slow the process down by asking awkward questions, like…do we actually need this development, is the development sustainable, is the water supply/disposal able to cope, how will drainage concerns be resolved? Planning officers are required to consider the opinions of consultees but they are under enormous pressure to “tow-the-line” and approve developments and that will be easier without the need to refer to committee.
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You are too easy on our national politicians. Planning is becoming nothing short of a dictatorship. Absurd housing targets, calculated using a formula which takes no account of real need or affordability, imposed by central government with little local control. This is not democracy. Let us, the people, decide how many new homes we need, what type and where.
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