A new Planning and Infrastructure Bill was announced in the first King’s Speech in July. The government pledged to “modernise planning committees” in the forthcoming bill, “in a bid to improve local decision making” and increase local authority capacity to provide a “more predictable service to developers”.
This article looks at this proposed change, in respect of which further details are expected at some point in the New Year.
With the changes proposed in the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) proposed in the summer expected to be adopted by the Government before Christmas, we can expect many more announcements and reforms to be announced by the Government in 2025 as it seeks to meet its target of 1.5m more homes in the UK.
Limiting the size of planning committees
Following the King’s Speech, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said it would introduce a “national scheme of delegation” that “focuses planning committees on the applications that really matter, avoids a potential development being reviewed multiple times even where it’s been included in the local plan, and places more trust in skilled professional planners”.
As part of this reform, the Government is considering limiting the size of planning committees, as part of this drive to “modernise” planning committees.
The Committee system is an important aspect of local democracy embedded into the UK planning system as an attempt to balance the various interests and considerations engaged by many planning applications.
However, to have, say, a 25-member Planning Committee engaged in dealing with a relatively minor application is often a waste of time and resources.
Often all Members present feel as though they have to chip in with a contribution to the debate, dragging out Planning Committees into very long evenings, sometimes pushing agenda items off the agenda as many Committees will have a ‘time guillotine’ and causing unheard applications to be further delayed by being deferred by at least a month, until the next Planning Committee.
