Cllr David Page represents the Market Harborough West & Foxton Division on Leicestershire County Council.
Britain’s planning system is no longer meaningfully local. Labour’s reforms risk confirming what is already happening: power is shifting steadily from communities to the centre, without delivering the homes promised in return.
Local Plans are meant to provide a clear, democratically accountable framework for development: where growth should go, how it will be supported, and what should be protected. In principle, they reflect local control.
In practice, that control is increasingly constrained.
National policy, particularly the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), requires authorities to meet housing need and gives substantial weight to development where plans are absent, out of date, or where a five-year housing land supply cannot be demonstrated. The implication is clear: fail to align with national policy, and local control is weakened through appeal.
Yet the system is not operating from a position of strength. Only around 30 per cent of authorities have an up-to-date Local Plan, with the majority working with plans that are incomplete, out of date or still in preparation. This reflects a persistent misalignment between national expectations and local deliverability.
The result is a system driven less by strategic judgement and more by risk management, with plans advanced not because they are right, but because they are judged safer than having no plan at all.
Harborough District Council (HDC) in Leicestershire provides a clear example. Conservative councillors opposed the Local Plan, while other parties supported it despite recognising its limitations, on the basis that the alternative—speculative development and lost appeals—would be worse. That may be rational within the system, but it is not genuine local control.
There is an irony here, in that parties which claim to speak for local communities—particularly the Greens—supported a plan they themselves acknowledged was flawed, while Conservatives were prepared to take the clearer stand for residents and their communities.
This is not simply a question of political choice, however, because the constraint is structural and financial.
Infrastructure is expected to be funded largely through developer contributions—Section 106 agreements and, at HDC, the soon to be introduced Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). In theory, development pays for the infrastructure it requires, but in practice those contributions are negotiated, delayed and often reduced through viability arguments, while affordable housing requirements draw from the same finite pool of development value.
The system is therefore attempting to fund both infrastructure and affordability from a single constrained source, while assuming both can be delivered in full.
Alongside this sits a growing reliance on centrally supported delivery mechanisms. Through bodies such as Homes England, government is increasingly using taxpayer-backed, and often subsidised, repayable loans to support large-scale developments, including new settlements promoted at a national level. These arrangements are subject to Treasury approvals and staged “gateway” processes, reflecting both their scale and their financial risk.
While intended to unlock delivery, they introduce a further layer of uncertainty, because if economic conditions weaken or schemes fail to meet required thresholds, funding can be delayed, reduced or withdrawn. Developments that are only marginally viable can quickly become unviable, leaving infrastructure incomplete or affordable housing commitments diluted, while responsibility for the consequences remains local.
Overlaying this is the reality of central intervention. In South Oxfordshire District, the Secretary of State formally directed the council to continue its Local Plan despite a vote to withdraw it, while in Castle Point government warnings and the explicit threat of intervention followed years without an adopted plan. Local discretion therefore exists only within boundaries defined by the centre.
Labour’s reforms build on this model rather than depart from it, with the headline ambition of 1.5 million homes reinforcing a system in which housing numbers are set nationally and then distributed across the country.
In practice, that distribution has consequences. In Labour-controlled Leicester City, assessed housing need has reduced by roughly 10–20 per cent, depending on the comparison used, while surrounding districts have seen sharp increases. In HDC, requirements have risen by around 40–50 per cent, and in Oadby and Wigston increases are significantly higher, approaching or exceeding 80–90 per cent.
The consequence is that where cities are constrained, the shortfall does not disappear but is displaced, pushing growth outward into less constrained districts, often onto rural and Green Belt land. This may be presented as a technical recalibration, but it is ultimately a political choice about where development happens and who absorbs the impact.
At the same time, councils are told that control strengthens as their plans progress, yet the NPPF makes clear that emerging plans carry only limited weight until adoption, leaving authorities exposed—often for 18 months or more—to speculative development and appeal.
The system therefore demands compliance now in exchange for control later, but that trade-off might be defensible only if it delivered results.
It has not.
Labour’s case rests on increasing supply, yet the evidence suggests the constraint is not primarily supply but delivery. Net additional dwellings in England remain closer to 220,000 per year, well below the 300,000 required to meet the 1.5 million target, and planning approvals have not accelerated sufficiently to suggest a step change.
Releasing more land, particularly on the edge of towns and villages, does not resolve this; it simply changes where development happens.
At the same time, analysis by organisations such as Campaign to Protect Rural England suggests that significant brownfield capacity remains, raising legitimate questions about whether stated priorities are being followed in practice.
The central contradiction is therefore clear: the system claims to be locally led, yet operates through nationally imposed targets, redistributed need and constrained decision-making.
Labour’s reforms do not resolve that contradiction; they deepen it.
There is no zero-cost option, and the country does need more homes, but how those homes are delivered matters. The principle should remain simple: advisers advise and councillors decide, supported by a system that is transparent, accountable and genuinely local.
If that principle is allowed to erode further, we will not simply fail to deliver the homes the country needs, but will also weaken the democratic foundation on which planning decisions ultimately depend. Perhaps that’s been the plan all along.