Standardisation of planning decision-making to take effect in England

Planning law expert Iain Gilbey of Pinsent Masons was commenting ahead of a new national scheme of delegation taking effect on 31 October.

In England, the statutory powers for making planning decisions rest with local planning authorities. However, local government law allows elected officials to delegate responsibility for making planning decisions to planning committees, sub-committees, or individual planning officers. Under the current regime, the way delegation operates differs between local planning authorities in England, meaning that an application that could be determined by a planning officer under delegated powers in one area might be subject to determination by a planning committee if the proposed development were located in another.

The national scheme of delegation is the UK government’s plan to standardise – and streamline – the process. The changes were provided for in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and will be given effect by The Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 when they come into force. Local planning authorities in England are obliged to make changes to their local delegation processes if their current arrangements do not accord with the regulations.

Under the new regulations, local planning authorities would need to ensure that householder applications, minor commercial applications and minor residential applications, among other examples listed in Schedule 1, are all determined by a planning officer, not by a planning committee.

Larger schemes and applications for listed building consent, among other Schedule 2 examples, would, by default, fall subject to determination by a planning officer too, but could be referred to committee in certain circumstances. The regulations provide scope for a committee referral if both the committee chair and chief planning officer at the local authority agree that the application raises one or more issues of economic, social or environmental significance to the local area, or one or more significant planning matters having regard to the development plan and any other material considerations.

Some local authorities oppose the new national scheme of delegation. Media reports, including from Local Government Lawyer, The Planner, and Planning Geek, have highlighted that councillors in Fenland, Central Bedfordshire, Tameside and Bolton have all rejected proposals to amend their existing local delegation processes. According to the reports, the opposition is rooted in concerns that the move to reduce the number of applications being considered by planning committee will impact local democracy.

“The UK government has an extremely stretching housing target and sees delivery of new housing and infrastructure more generally as an important driver of economic growth,” said Gilbey. “For developers, the prospect of a streamlining and standardising of local planning decision-making processes across England will be welcomed as removing some of the barriers that exist to development at the moment.”

“However, there remains some uncertainty around how the national scheme will operate in practice. For example, developers will want to know when committee chairs and chief planning officers consider a Schedule 2 application to raise a ‘significant planning matter’ – with the potential for the ‘significance’ threshold to be applied differently across the country,” he said.

“There is also a further risk to developers in areas where the local authority continues to resist making changes to accord with the new national scheme of delegation – that risk being that planning decisions taken after the regime takes effect are subsequently challenged and found to be unlawful, on the basis that the local decision-making process did not accord with the new regulations. If this tension persists, it could paralyse decision making in the affected areas and trigger a political blame-game, at least until such time as the local arrangements are made compliant.” Gilbey said.

“Further, as other commentators have highlighted, local government monitoring officers could also be placed in an invidious position in respect of their personal duty to report, to government, cases where committees or officers exercising the powers of a local authority, do so in a way that is non-compliant with the law,” he added.

In guidance issued in the summer, the UK government confirmed that, where local planning authorities do not comply with the new regulations and their planning committees continue to make decisions on applications that should be made by delegated officers, those decisions “may be subject to judicial review by anyone aggrieved by the decision” and could end up being quashed.

The government has the power to go to court to seek a court order that would compel dissenting local authorities to comply with the new national scheme of delegation. It is as yet unclear whether any local authorities feel strongly enough to raise judicial review proceedings of their own against the national scheme, or whether the government will bring its own proceedings to bring those authorities into line.