National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions

John Milne Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing the debate.

The Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned by the introduction of a national scheme of delegation, which gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers and allows planning decisions to bypass local planning committees. We opposed this approach throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and sought to protect the existing powers of committees. Faster planning decisions should come from having properly resourced planning departments and giving councils the freedom to set planning fees that truly reflect the cost of their job—not by shutting communities out of decisions about their local areas.

On Saturday, a national scheme of delegation will come into force. Every council in England must rewrite its constitution to match it, and none has been given a say on whether to do so. As many Members have said, planning is where most people first meet democracy, and it is one of the most important reasons why they vote for a councillor in the first place.

Household applications, minor commercial applications, schemes of up to nine homes and a range of technical decisions must now go to officers. For other applications, a committee can step in only where it raises a significant issue and an officer and nominated member agree; a councillor cannot refer an application alone. The ward member’s call-in has gone, and so has the route by which enough objections would bring an application to committee. Nine houses next to someone’s home are not a minor matter, and councillors will still be blamed for it. When something is built that nobody wants, residents will ask their councillor why, and the honest answer will be that they had no control over it whatever.

The Government’s case is that committees slow things down, but the reality is that this country does not have a big permissions problem in the first place; councillors already approve nine in 10 applications.

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Member will know, as the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) said, that a cross-party delegation of Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Greens on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee came up with sensible amendments to try to make sure there was a balance between efficiency in the planning system and the criteria under which officers could make more decisions, and still involving local councillors. Can the hon. Member elaborate on where the balance should be between councillors and planning officers?

[John Milne]

I very much agree, and I will come on to that.

Removing local scrutiny, as this scheme does, touches none of the problems I have mentioned. Where delay is real, it lies in planning departments running with about 80% of the staff they need, one in five major applications being decided on time, and fees that the Government accept do not cover the cost of the work. The Liberal Democrats made that point throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) tabled 78 amendments in Committee and more than 50 on Report, including some to try to protect planning committees. Unfortunately, the Government accepted none of those amendments.

The Government have decided that residents are just a nuisance to be overcome. Through these measures, which come on top of years of reduced neighbourhood control, they have killed one bird with a thousand stones. It is not as if local people had much say over things beforehand. The Liberal Democrats regret the lack of any attempt to build consent. This is just storing up problems and resentment for the future, as Members have said.

I ask the Minister: will the Government let a ward member bring an application to committee on behalf of residents as the locally elected official? Will they look again at the standard method—the flawed formula—that sets local targets? Will they commit to telling us in plain terms whether this change is doing what it is supposed to by 2028 at the latest? Finally, national fees are planned at an estimated 90% cost recovery. Will the Government commit to full cost recovery so that planning departments are properly resourced? We need to rediscover the principle of consent.