Cllr Kevin Bentley is the leader of the Conservative Group on the Local Government Association. He is a councillor on Colchester City Council and a former leader of Essex County Council.
For many people across the country, the main responsibility they care about from their councillors is planning. Whether it is protecting the countryside, encouraging regeneration or ensuring that infrastructure is built to support growth, the public have very strong views on planning and elect councillors to make decisions that benefit their communities.
However, democratic oversight of planning will be significantly curtailed from 31st October. And Conservative councillors are rebelling against the Government over this.
Under the National Scheme of Delegation (NSD), imposed by the Government through secondary legislation, thousands of councillors are due to lose their call-in powers. The ability to ‘call-in’ a planning application to an elected planning committee is a vital power, allowing councillors to influence planning decisions and giving the public a chance to feel heard. It means those planning applications which have been called-in are decided by a majority vote of the planning committee of elected councillors, rather than by unelected officers.
No planning application for 9 or fewer dwellings can now be called-in, no matter the size of the settlement the proposed development is in. No consideration is given to how inappropriate the site may be. Whether proposing 9 dwellings in a small rural village where it would constitute a significant increase in the population to turning a family home into a 9-flat apartment block, elected councillors will not be allowed to decide the outcome of these applications. Instead, they will be decided by unelected officers.
But it gets worse. For applications of 10 or more dwellings, they may only go to committee if both the chair of the planning committee and the un-elected lead planning officer agree for it to go to the planning committee of elected councillors. So, a militant lead planning officer could ensure that no planning application ever again is decided by those elected by the community the proposed development impacts. A politically motivated chair could stop democratic oversight of applications in wards from other parties. The decision to allow democratic oversight of planning applications, one of the most emotive policy issues across large parts of the country, is now down to just two people in every council, one of whom isn’t even accountable to the electorate.
Somehow, it gets even worse. For applications for 150 dwellings or more (outside of London), the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government can decide to call-in an application if the council (either via a planning committee or officer decision) decide to refuse an application. This means that Angela Rayner herself can just approve any application for 150 dwellings or more across almost all of England. How much confidence do many local, rural, English communities represented by Conservative councillors trust her decision-making over that of the councillors they elect?
For a Government claiming to want to push power out of Westminster and empower local communities to decide their own futures, this is democratic vandalism. It is an attack particularly on rural England (a series of communities Labour don’t understand, don’t want to understand and are waging a vindictive class war against) and will have consequences across the country.
Unsurprisingly, Conservative councillors are not standing by and letting this happen without a fight. Last week, the LGA Conservative Group published a letter to the Prime Minister, appealing to his supposed desire to give communities more power, asking him to change direction and not implement the NSD. Conservative councillors have signed in droves, with over a third of principal authority Conservative councillors in England signing within the first three days of publication. Plans are now coming together to deliver this letter personally to Number 10 South (or whatever we’re meant to call the real Number 10 now).
Local democracy is being dismantled. The Government is saying one thing about giving power to communities but doing the complete opposite. Conservative councillors and the LGA Conservatives are leading the resistance to this. But there is a long way to go to protect the ability of local communities to decide their own development.