The Revenge of the Councillors

With the Government’s changes to planning and the National Scheme of Delegation coming in, does that mean the end of politics in planning?  

No.  Politicians are capable of both resisting these changes and also working around them.

Firstly, we’re already seen Councils across England pass motions opposing the Government’s reform, particularly the National Scheme of Delegation, both directly and indirectly with the County Council Network and the Local Government Association. The complaint has been the removal of democratic involvement, phrased as the loss of local voices.  This is just the opening shot – expect slowdowns and legal challenges.

Secondly, I expect to see councillors looking to Local Plans as their method of control, making that process less policy-driven and much more political.  They will write to officers, they will speak to officers and they are already starting to fight to get on the Local Plan Committee instead of trying to avoid it!

So, if you’re to make a positive out of these new changes you need to understand how it all works politically. Given that the Local Plan process will have far more councillor involvement, you must start far earlier with them, or your site won’t be allocated when others are.

The remarkable thing about planning committees is that although councillors have often considered their views before the committee starts, the debate is at least nominally in public.  That means that you as an applicant can see what’s going on and have at least some data as to why.  The Local Plan by comparison is somewhat hidden, why did one site survive from Reg 18 to Reg 19, when another didn’t?  I am sure that there are a lot of policy reasons that can be produced, but private decision making lets politicians be far more influential than the current model.

It’s becoming a new world, one where the politics is not going away but becoming less visible. Developers and site promoters can adapt to this political reality or not.

Get in touch with as the CCP to learn what we can do to help. Email me at morgan@theccp.net.