New UK planning rules will bypass councils to fast-track housebuilding

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Local council committees would be bypassed on planning decisions to prevent “damaging delays” to building homes, prisons and infrastructure under proposals to be put forward by Sir Keir Starmer as he seeks to reach ambitious housebuilding targets.

Ministers will set out plans on Monday that would allow locally-appointed planning officers to greenlight projects that comply with existing development plans, avoiding scrutiny from local council committees that can often lead to months of wrangling and indecision. 

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said on Sunday that “grasping the nettle of planning committee reform and fast-tracking decision-making is a vital part of our Plan for Change”, a reference to the 2029 milestones that Starmer set out last week.

Rayner told the BBC that if planning applications had been agreed democratically as part of a local plan, and complied with the National Planning Policy Framework, “there’s no need to then keep going round and round in a system”.

She added: “Streamlining the approvals process by modernising local planning committees means tackling the chronic uncertainty and damaging delays that act as a drag anchor on building the homes people desperately need.”

Under the proposals, to be set out in a white paper on Monday, local planning officers — who are separate from council planning committees — will be given enhanced roles to give the green light to planning proposals. 

The government has vowed to declog the UK’s planning system as it strives to free up infrastructure and housebuilding projects to try to fire up growth.

Starmer doubled down on his commitment to build 1.5mn homes over the next parliament at a speech on Thursday in which he set out six “milestones” for his government to reach by 2029.

The prime minister acknowledged that the goal was “hugely ambitious”, given that the last time England succeeded in building 300,000 new homes in a single year was 1969.

Ministers are trying to reverse the decline in supply at a time when higher mortgage rates have tempered demand for new houses. 

The National Housing Federation, which represents affordable housing providers, and the Home Builders Federation industry group have said ministers are on track to miss their ambitious 1.5mn home target by almost one-third. 

Last month, Rayner “called-in” a controversial planning decision about an 8,400-home development project in Kent, which local council officers were planning to refuse. The decision will now be made by ministers.

Rayner also approved development plans last week for a data centre in Buckinghamshire, one of two major projects of the kind that were called in after the election in response to attempts by local councils to block them.

Proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework would be published on Thursday, Rayner said on Sunday.

They would set out how the Labour government would remove some of the “subjective reasons as to why planning doesn’t go ahead”, she told Sky News.

At the start of this year, local authorities reported that they had 120,300 planning applications in the system. 

Data from that period showed that less than a fifth of major applications were determined within the statutory 13-week period, and only 38 per cent of minor applications were determined in the statutory eight-week period.