Delegation Nation

While much of the focus on the government’s housing policy tends to be on the number of new homes it wants to build (1.5 million); and where it wants to build them (the New Towns programme), one of the most significant changes to the planning system has quietly been making its way onto council agendas this autumn. 

The new National Scheme of Delegation for Planning Functions comes into force in England on 31st October. For more on what it entails, my colleague Perry Miller wrote an excellent explainer in June, available here. To comply with the new framework, councils are having to amend their constitutions. Authorities that fail to do so by the deadline risk decisions taken after 31 October being found unlawful and potentially challenged through judicial review.

Not every council has been willing to comply quietly. Bolton, Tameside and Central Bedfordshire have all voted against amending their constitutions. Staffordshire County Council offers a slightly different but equally revealing example (even if its role as a planning authority is limited). Its Audit and Standards Committee initially refused to endorse the changes, but full council ultimately approved them after members were advised that adoption was legally necessary. 
The vote followed a lengthy debate and was presented by the council’s leader as an act of legal necessity rather than political support.

At the centre of councillors’ concerns is the loss of their ability to call certain applications before committee. There are also questions about how communities will make their voices heard, and whether ward members who do not sit on the planning committee will have less influence over development in their areas. The number of objections received will not in itself determine which route an application follows. Yet in an age when AI makes it increasingly easy to generate large numbers of standardised responses, introducing a mandatory objections threshold would create problems of its own.

The system might be being made more efficient, but is a weakened voice for parish/town and district councillors a price worth paying? The counter-argument might be that this will ease the burden on committees and allow them to use their judgement on the most important applications. Councils with well-run planning teams and committees should be expected to continue perform well irrespective of these changes.  

The way things have been playing out is very much in line with our own research. SEC Newgate’s National Planning Barometer 2026: ‘Are Labour’s Planning Reforms Actually Working’ has repeatedly found tensions between national ambition on housing and local delivery. In this year’s edition, less than a third of the councillors surveyed thought a national scheme of delegation would have a positive impact on housing delivery. Yet nearly two thirds (63%) thought that increased resourcing for local planning authorities would be effective. This suggests that councillors judge capacity to be a larger constraint than committee involvement. 

This research is now being played out in real time in town halls across the country – with isolated resistance or begrudging acceptance of the imminent reforms. 

From the government’s point of view, this is very much about improving consistency in the planning system and thus expediting the delivery of new homes; it’s about redressing the balance (as it sees it) between local buy-in and delivery, and ensuring planning committee time is spent on significant applications – as this can vary from one authority to another. 

The new National Scheme of Delegation could also shift the emphasis as to where in the process local councillors can be most effective. There could be greater lobbying of the councillor and officer making the ‘gateway decision’ as to whether an application goes to committee; and would correspondence from applicants and members need to be disclosed? More broadly, councillors could see the local plan process as being of heightened importance to seeking the views of the local community – but that is still far removed from the nuts and bolts of an individual application and its associated infrastructure. 

These meetings, tucked away in quiet corners of council audit committees, are playing out the perennial dilemma facing national government housing policy – can you consult less and deliver more? A standardised system is welcome; winning over those who will be responsible for implementing it is the next step on the long road to better housing delivery.