A Conservative shadow housing minister has suggested the Government is “tinkering” with planning decision-making, instead of “getting developers developing and builders building” new homes.
After ministers unveiled proposals to let some developers swerve town hall committees before they build, David Simmonds said the 4% of applications that elected councillors considered themselves were the ones where “the local democratic voice is so relevant”.
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook said Mr Simmonds’s party had “torpedoed” housing supply when they were in power.
His department set out plans on Monday to give council employees an “enhanced decision-making role” to implement development policies, so some building proposals “could bypass planning committees entirely to tackle chronic uncertainty, unacceptable delays and unnecessary waste of time and resources”.
Mr Pennycook told the Commons the announcement was “explicitly designed to kick-start engagement” ahead of a more formal consultation, and later warned he would “consider all the powers at our disposal” to intervene if local authorities resisted the changes.
Mr Simmonds said the system “matters because it impacts the look and feel of our communities” and asked: “Given the huge increase in the housing planning permissions granted under the previous government, when does the Government now intend to start work on getting developers developing and builders building, rather than tinkering with a democratic system that’s already delivered more than a million homes with consent in England already?”
He also said during his question that with 96% of planning applications determined by council staff already, “it is that 4% to which the local democratic voice is so relevant”.
To accelerate the delivery of the homes and places our communities need, we must make improvements to the planning system at a local level.
Our proposals to modernise planning committees will support the plan-led system and speed up local decision-making.https://t.co/1pBAhdOJn5
— Matthew Pennycook MP (@mtpennycook) December 9, 2024
The Conservative shadow minister urged Mr Pennycook to set out what powers councillors had to call in controversial decisions, or cases where developers had not stuck to their agreed plans.
Mr Pennycook replied: “It’s quite rich hearing from (Mr Simmonds) crow about planning permissions in the system. We’re experiencing the lowest planning permission and completions in a decade as a result of the party opposite’s changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) made in December 2023 that have torpedoed supply and hit growth across this country.”
He had earlier said the announcement was “just the latest in a series of working papers on planning reform, and it’s explicitly designed to kick-start engagement before we launch a formal Government consultation on a more detailed proposition”.
The minister described three proposals which he said could “streamline local planning decision-making” across England – a national scheme setting out which types of planning applications should be determined by a committee of elected councillors and which by employed officers, new dedicated committees for strategic development “to dedicate energy to the most significant projects”, and mandatory training for elected decision makers.
He said that although just 4% of applications came before councillors’ committees, these represented some of the largest plans and therefore a “substantial portion of total units in the planning process”.
Asked by Conservative MP Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) about Government interventions into local-level decision-making, Mr Pennycook replied: “We haven’t outlined any proposals in this working paper that relate to call-ins or the takeover of local plans from the centre.
“But he’s absolutely right, ministers already have existing powers to take over a local plan in extremis, it hasn’t been used before.
“We are more than willing to use all the powers at our disposal to ensure we have up-to-date local planning coverage, if there are local authorities out there and I say this very candidly and openly to the House, if there are local authorities out there that resist the changes we are trying to make, that take no steps to put an up-to-date local plan in place, we will consider all the powers at our disposal.”
