Cllr Josh Mastin-Lee is a councillor in Barnet. He is the Chief Whip and co-lead for Planning in the Conservative Group.
Last year in Hull, Sir Keir Starmer, the unknowing seat warmer for Bonnie Prince Andy, huffed nasally against a “cottage industry of checkers and blockers”. Some of us chuckled with dark irony. There stood the Grand High Priest of HR gospel, grey blur Nannyism, now seeking to demolish what he sneeringly called “barriers to growth”.
Well, we’re not chuckling now. Because it has since become clear that the “blockers” Sir Keir wished to steamroller are his own electorate and, for us Councillors, our own residents.
I refer to the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which Labour MPs passed to a triumphant fanfare of “build baby build” baseball cappery. Yet gradually emerging from the air of triumph, quietly but dangerously, like the piano key crescendo of “Jaws”, is a threat to local democracy.
One of the Act’s more troubling, though lesser-known, reforms takes effect from 31 October this year. It replaces the old delegation powers (in place since 1972) with a new national scheme of delegation. This new national scheme (applicable to all English Councils uniformly) will make unelected planning officers the decision-makers for all but a select category of planning applications.
The reforms cleave planning applications into so-called “Schedule 1” and “Schedule 2” cases.
Schedule 1 applications (smaller and household projects) will always, and I mean ALWAYS, be decided by planning officers. Schedule 2 applications (for bigger developments) are still presumed to be decided by planning officers, UNLESS the Chief Planning Officer and Chair of the Planning Committee BOTH agree that they meet one of two criteria: (A) the development has a significant local impact or (B) the development poses a significant planning issue.
“Well, fair enough”, you might say, whetting your anti-NIMBY pitchfork. But dig further into the details and you find some damning repercussions for our system of democratic planning.
To take three examples:
First, any household applications such as extensions or basement excavations, will be completely extracted from Councillor decision-making. Most are already decided by officers, but the handbrake right to “call in” schemes allows residents (both directly by speaking at committee and indirectly through their Councillors) a qualified right to bring the application under public scrutiny. That right will disappear, buried under rubble.
Second, BOTH the Chief Planning Officer and the chairman of the Planning Committee must agree that a Schedule 2 application meets the criteria to go before the committee. That means that the unelected Chief Planning Officer effectively gets a veto right over the planning process, because if one of the two disagrees then (as a default) the application, no matter how mammoth in scale, gets decided by planning officers.
Third, the “significant planning issue” (Criteria B) is not met where officers think that the application is “policy compliant”. This test risks making the two person “referral” discussion the de facto planning committee. If officers think an application is policy compliant it won’t go to committee, and officers will approve it. If it isn’t deemed policy compliant, it will go to committee and the committee will of course refuse it (officers would not recommend a non-compliant application). The planning committee risks becoming a rubber stamp body, only deployed for refusals.
People are less likely to support a scheme if they are excluded from its formulation. Especially in an age where many legitimate concerns about quality of building; of characterless, densely packed tower blocks in cities; of sprawling, awkwardly arranged and amenity free housing estates in towns and villages, is pompously waved away as retiree “NIMBYism”. I fear for the stability of a planning system which, like Sir Keir, sees the people who wish to discuss bad planning as bothersome “blockers”.
Just in Barnet, I think of the Great North Leisure Park development of 1,500 units up to twenty eight storeys high. Planning officers recommended the application for approval, but the planning committee refused due to severe concerns about density, height, design, and transport links. Sir Sadiq Khan waved it through anyway, much to the dismay of Barnet residents. But imagine the public outcry if the application wasn’t even to go to planning committee in the first place, on the grounds that an unelected official had deemed it ‘policy compliant’. Yet this is the reality of the new rules facing every Council in England.
For any Conservative Councillor still reading (thank you for your thumb restraint), I would recommend the following:
I will end with a note of hope, so that you may once again put down that anti-NIMBY pitchfork.
Britain can learn how to build sufficient housing again; to realise Skelton’s Property Owning Democracy. But for that mission to succeed and endure, the promise must be measured in beautiful homes designed with public input, not utilitarian “units” imposed by unelected officers. The Conservatives began this mission with Rodger Scruton’s “Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission”, which in its flagship 2020 Report had Communities and planning democracy as a cornerstone.
Sir Keir’s desperation for legacy and penchant for drab authoritarianism may have bulldozed that mission. But only for the time being. Once the Conservatives return to Government, we can and will rebuild it.
Until then, Councillors should shout about these reforms from the rooftops. Residents will discover their impact soon enough and may show little sympathy for those who sat back in silence.