If the government’s planning committee reforms go through, the biggest change will not simply be that fewer applications reach committee. It will be that a new two-person gatekeeping system sits in the middle of the process. In most cases, the route will start and end with planning officers. Only a narrower band of cases will have any real chance of reaching elected councillors, and even then only if two people agree. The consultation on the reforms is open now and runs until 11:59pm on 23 April 2026, so residents, councillors and councils still have time to give their views before the rules are settled.
The government’s draft scheme splits planning work into two broad camps. Schedule 1 is the officer-only pile: the smaller, routine and technical matters that ministers want dealt with administratively rather than through committee ritual. That includes householder applications, minor commercial and minor residential schemes, prior approvals, certificates of lawfulness, discharge of conditions and most reserved matters applications. Schedule 2 is the smaller group of cases that might still go to committee, but only in limited circumstances. Those include larger planning applications, listed building consent, section 73 condition-variation cases, section 73A retrospective applications, phased reserved matters, advertisement consent and tree preservation order consent.
But this is where the story gets more interesting, and more political. Schedule 2 does not mean “committee decides”. It means “committee is still possible, but only if the gate opens”. Under the draft guidance, that gate is controlled by the chief planning officer, or equivalent senior officer, and a nominated councillor, who would usually be the chair of planning committee or equivalent. If both agree that a case raises a genuinely important local issue or a significant planning question, it can go to committee. If they do not, it stays with officers. No automatic call-in. No magic objections threshold. No ward member hauling it in because the postbag is bulging.
That is a far bigger constitutional shift than it may sound. In practice, the system would depend heavily on how well those two figures work together. One brings technical planning judgement and day-to-day control of the service. The other brings democratic legitimacy and political awareness. Between them, they become the only real doorway through which many of the more substantial cases can pass on their way to committee. If they are aligned, the system may run smoothly. If they are not, councils could find themselves in a swamp of mixed messages, procedural rows and accusations that decisions are being stitched up either politically or bureaucratically. The guidance makes clear that councils will need to rewrite their schemes of delegation, committee terms of reference and internal procedures to fit the national model.
For lay readers, the plain-English version is this. Schedule 1 means officers decide it. Schedule 2 means officers probably still decide it, unless the senior planner and the nominated councillor both decide it is important enough to go upstairs. That makes the relationship between those two roles central to the whole reform. Training, clear rules, proper record-keeping and transparent reasons will matter, because public confidence will not survive for long if people cannot see why one case was referred and another was quietly kept off the committee agenda. The draft regulations themselves also cap decision-making committees at 13 members and say the new regime would come into force on 30 September 2026 if adopted.
So yes, this is about delegation. But it is also about power, trust and who gets the final say on whether a controversial application is heard in public by councillors or disposed of by officers behind a desk. Anyone who cares about how local planning decisions are made should use the consultation while it is still open, because once the gate is built, it will be rather harder to complain about who holds the key.
The Shepway Vox Team
Dissent is NOT a Crime
