Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Jamieson]

At end to insert “but this House regrets that the draft Regulations will reduce local democratic oversight over planning decisions, and risk putting further pressure on council officers.”

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I must first declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire. These regulations may appear to be a relatively straightforward implementation of the Planning and Infrastructure Act, but they represent something much more significant. They change one of the fundamental democratic safeguards of our planning system.

Nobody on these Benches disputes that our planning system needs to work better. We need more homes. We need faster commercial developments and we need better infrastructure. We need a planning system that is efficient, proportionate and gives certainty to communities and developers alike. But we fear the Government are pursuing speed at the expense of democratic oversight, and I am afraid that, on this, I must disagree with the Minister.

Planning is not an exact science; it is an exercise in judgment. Planning officers, planning committees and inspectors are all required to weigh competing material planning considerations: the need for housing, economic growth, environmental protection, heritage, highways, design and the impact on neighbouring communities. The legislation and the National Planning Policy Framework provide the framework against which those decisions are made, but they cannot prescribe the weight and view for every one of those considerations. Ultimately, that is a matter of judgment.

In many cases, that judgment is relatively straightforward. That is why around 90% to 95% of planning applications are already determined by planning officers under delegated powers, with only a small proportion ever coming before elected planning committees. Of those that go to committees, the vast majority go in line with the planning officer’s recommendation. I cannot find national statistics, but for Central Bedfordshire, in the last 12 months, only one of the 56 applications that have gone to committee where the officer disagreed has been overturned on appeal. That is a very small number.

The applications that reach committee are often those where the balance of decision-making is finer: where they have a significant impact on a community, where residents have genuine concerns, where there are competing planning considerations to be weighed, or where substantial developments will have a lasting consequence on the character of an area. Those are precisely the cases where we need democratic accountability. People will not always agree with the outcome of a planning decision, but they are far more likely to accept the decision if they have seen the arguments tested in public by elected representatives who are accountable to the communities they serve. That is democracy in action.

These regulations, as the Minister highlighted, generate a national framework governing how authorities must discharge planning functions, and they significantly narrow the discretion that authorities have traditionally exercised through their own constitutions and schemes of delegation. As the Minister said, all Schedule 1 applications will include minor residential applications for nine homes or fewer, minor commercial and householder developments, and discharge of planning conditions and reserved matters for applications of up to 500 homes. Schedule 2 applications, which are largely all others, are presumed to be determined by officers unless, at the gateway test, both the nominated officer, who is normally the chief planner, and the nominated councillor, who is normally the chair of committee, agree that it raises

“an issue of economic, social or environmental significance to the … area”

or a significant planning matter

“having regard to the development plan and any other material considerations”.

That is a dramatic reduction in the democratic accountability of the planning system.

Let us look at Schedule 1. The Government suggest that these arrangements relate to minor applications, but this needs to be seen in context. An application for nine homes in a small village is significant. If you happen to be a neighbour, that is significant. What happens when a site is agreed with the suggested nine homes but is subsequently brought back with 15 or 20 homes under reserved matters? That is not an unusual situation. For developments of up to 500 homes, all reserved matters, discharge of conditions and Section 106 arrangements would be determined by officers.

When members of the public hear “reserved matters”, they think of the colour of the front door and so forth, and I would be very happy with officers determining that, but that is not the case. Those of us who have dealt with planning applications for a number of years know that reserved matters generally involve the layout, design, density, highways, landscaping, drainage, open space, how many community facilities are there and so forth. These are not trivial decisions. When the Minister was leader of Stevenage Borough Council, would she have been happy with a 500-home development in the centre of Stevenage and not having any influence on the decision being made?

This may be bad, but it gets worse. The threshold for some of those more major applications, which could involve thousands of homes, going to committee requires a “significant” issue. That is a very high planning threshold.

There are other practical considerations. Going to planning committee provides an intermediate step that allows local councillors to have a discussion with planning officers to get those extra things. I can relate examples in my own ward where we successfully worked with the developer to get a few houses moved in a different direction so that they did not overlook and to get some additional funding for recreation.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I am aware of the time.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

The noble Lord is aware, so may he bring his remarks to an end, if he does not mind?

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I will. I thank the noble Lord very much. This is time limited.

The planning system needs to strike a balance; this system does not. We need to ensure democratic accountability; there is no need to remove it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I suggest to the noble Baroness that freeing up some of the time of our experienced planners will give them the opportunity to go back to developers and challenge information like that when it is not adequate. The fact that there can be dialogue between the planning officers and the developers will definitely speed the process up.

In conclusion, I remind noble Lords what the regulations are seeking to achieve. They are about improving the quality and speed of decision-making, so that the housing and growth which local communities want and need can be delivered more quickly.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down, may I query a couple of her comments? There was reference to the local plan. What happens with applications that are not in the local plan? Those are quite significant. We talked about reserved matters and the Minister admitted that, for very large applications, it is appropriate for those matters to come to a committee. But as both the Minister and I know, you have at local plan stage and at outline planning stage virtually nothing. It is a little more than a red line and some pretty graphics of what is proposed. There is nothing to tie the developer’s hands, and those changes can be very significant. We can see a 50% increase in the amount of housing, or the amount of affordable housing halving, the Section 106 amount halving—a whole series of things. Those are fundamental, not small changes. I agree with the Minister that the principle may have been agreed, but not the detail. There was also a comment about “significant” being decided locally. I just want to be clear: is the Minister saying that what is significant will be determined locally for level 2?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

On the reserved matters, I have already set out in some detail how they are going to be treated, and that they can go back into the process. The size of an application’s related outline permission will fall into Schedule 2. That means it can be subject to the gateway test and referred to committee, where councils think that is necessary. Applications that are not in the local plan will be subject to the gateway test, so they will be treated exactly the same as another application.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

Sorry, I think there is a slight misunderstanding. I am referring to reserved matters applications below 500 houses. Obviously, the outline will have gone to committee, but, on my understanding of how it is written, will reserved matters for, say, a site of 499 houses, which is a major development in most places—and reserved matters can be dramatically different from what was initially envisaged—be allowed to come to committee if the senior planner and the senior officer believe that there has been a significant change? Further, the Minister referred to applications falling into Schedule 2 if they are not in the local plan. What about minor developments, which may not be in the local plan: would—and could—they go to committee?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The local authority will determine whether items that are not in the local plan are Schedule 1 or Schedule 2, and it will then decide whether those applications need to go through the gateway process. I am not sure what the argument is over reserved matters. While the principle of development is agreed at outline permission stage, every reserved matters application could still represent a substantial major development in its own right, and those will be subject to the same test as a new application coming in. If the outline permission does not meet that threshold, the reserved matters application will be in Schedule 1; if it does meet the threshold, it will go into Schedule 2 and be subject to the gateway test.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I am sorry to be slightly pedantic on this, but the information I got from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was very clear: any reserved matters application that is below 500 houses is in Schedule 1—there is no significance test. I would be very pleased if the Minister, either today or later, could clarify that. In the same vein, everything that is a minor development—nine houses or fewer, and so on—even if it is not in the local plan, will be determined as Schedule 1, and therefore not subject to planning. If the Minister could clarify that, either now or subsequently, it would be very much appreciated, because that was certainly not what the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee picked up.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thought that I had been as clear as I can be. Applications for fewer than nine houses will automatically be in Schedule 1, and there will automatically be an officer decision, so there is no need to clarify that any further. On whether applications of significant social or economic interest would be brought to the attention of the committee, a local council can put a definition of that in its planning guidance if it wishes. If that answers the noble Lord’s question on that point, I hope that I have picked up all the questions I have been asked.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her explanation, as I interpreted it. The English planning system has always sought to strike a balance between national government-set planning policy and local government and local authorities that put that policy into practice through democratically accountable institutions with knowledge of their local communities. That balance has served us well. I thank my noble friends Lady Eaton, Lady O’Neill and Lord Evans of Guisborough, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for their contributions. They have all sung with one voice: they feel that these regulations will remove democracy and transparency and risk undermining faith in the system. Local planning committees that consider controversial applications give that opportunity for visible public decision-making, and there will be genuine consequences to passing these regulations.

These regulations move that balance to central prescription, not by changing planning policy itself to improve it, but by strong-arming how local authorities organise the democratic process by which planning decisions are made. All too many will be made in private, in the dark, and we will lose faith in it. That seems to contrast, as my noble friend Lord Evans of Guisborough said, with what a certain Member of the other House was saying yesterday about further devolution. It seems interesting that the first move the following day is a dramatic move towards centralisation.

We all accept that there are occasions when planning committees frustrate and delay development, but that is not a reason to completely undermine the democratic underpinning of the planning process. During the passage of the Bill, we proposed an amendment to tighten up the committee process without completely undermining it. Unfortunately, this was dismissed out of hand by the Minister. I recall the phrase “driving a coach and horses through” being used. We also sought to clarify the situation on brownfield, with a strong material presumption in favour of development on brownfield sites, which has also been rejected by the Government.

It is by providing clear, consistent planning policy and guidance, and a consistent and coherent planning process with appropriate checks and balances, that we can ensure a smooth-running planning system that the public have faith in, not by undermining the democratic fundamentals. For that reason, I would have liked to ask the House to support this regret amendment. However, I am a practical man and I recognise that, at this time of night and after dealing with a slightly contentious Bill earlier, noble Lords would probably prefer that I do not. So, with regret, I will not press my regret amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.