Since Saturday (31st October), the National Scheme of Delegation has swapped a patchwork of council constitutions for one national rulebook. Councillors can no longer call applications in, objection counts no longer send them to committee, and bloated committees have been cut to 13 members.
The decision that matters now comes earlier. It sits with two people, the head of planning and the committee chair, who between them decide whether a scheme goes to committee at all. I think plenty of developers will learn that the hard way, waiting for a committee date that never comes.
The new rules in brief
The scheme was brought in under the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. Applications now fall into one of two schedules.
Schedule 1 covers householder applications, minor commercial schemes (under 1,000 sqm) and minor residential schemes (up to nine homes on sites under 0.5 hectares), plus technical consents such as discharge of conditions and most reserved matters. Officers decide these. There is no route to committee, however many objections they attract.
Schedule 2 covers everything else. Even here, the presumption is that officers decide. An application only goes to committee if the council’s nominated officer (usually the head of planning) and nominated member (usually the planning committee chair) agree that it raises an economic, social or environmental issue of significance to the local area, or a significant planning matter under the development plan. If they do not agree, officers decide.
Councillor call-ins and referrals triggered by the number of objections have gone. Planning committees are capped at 13 members. The bar for a decision that warrants committee time and member deliberation is now high, and deliberately so.
Not every council went quietly
Tameside councillors voted 26 to 22 on 6 October against the constitutional changes needed to put the scheme into effect, despite their monitoring officer warning that the council could not lawfully make planning decisions without them. Bolton refused the next day, and Central Bedfordshire and Fenland did the same.
Tameside is a telling place for a revolt. Its two Labour MPs sit in the Cabinet: Angela Rayner, MP for Ashton-under-Lyne and the Housing Secretary responsible for the reform, and Jonathan Reynolds, MP for Stalybridge and Hyde and Business Secretary. Both Tameside and Bolton sit in Greater Manchester, the city region the Prime Minister led until this summer.
The criticisms have been consistent. Opponents say the scheme rides roughshod over local democracy, takes away residents’ voice through the councillors they elect, and leaves decisions to be settled behind closed doors between an officer and a committee chair, a backdoor deal by another name. Tameside’s Reform group leader called it an overreach by central government; a Bolton Conservative called it an assault on local democracy.
The Conservatives have made it a national campaign. More than 1,400 Conservative councillors signed an LGA Conservative Group petition calling for the scheme to be repealed before Halloween, and last week Conservative MPs and councillors took that case to Parliament.
Halloween has come and gone, and the scheme is law. Bolton, Tameside and the others have not stopped it. They have left themselves open to judicial review: as Tameside’s own monitoring officer warned, any committee decision taken under the old arrangements risks being quashed in the courts. Meanwhile, officers carry on deciding. But the politics will not go away. Defending residents’ say plays well on the doorstep, and councils outside London face elections in May 2027.
Nor is the scheme necessarily permanent. The government has committed to reviewing it by October 2028, and the Conservatives want it gone. Developers with long programmes should not assume today’s rules will still apply when their scheme comes forward.
What it means for community engagement
The theatre of committee is over for routine applications. You won’t see another meeting like Camden’s in September 2021. Councillors approved four homes on an infill plot in Gondar Gardens, West Hampstead, and the gallery erupted: expletives, a chair thrown, members asked whether they were on the side of the rich. All of it went out live on the council’s website.
That scheme would never have reached committee under the NSD. Four homes on a small infill site is Schedule 1, decided by officers on its planning merits, however loud the objection. The same goes for the householder extensions in Highgate and Hampstead that have long caused more heat in Camden than many major schemes. Camden’s Members Briefing Panel, which reviewed any approval that drew objections from a local group, a councillor or three households, has gone too.
Larger schemes are a different story, and the Schedule 2 test is ambiguous. What counts as significant in social, economic or environmental terms is not defined. How councils apply the test across the country is one to watch: readings will vary from borough to borough, and the first referral decisions will quickly set local precedent. The statutory guidance says significant issues are unlikely where a scheme broadly complies with an up-to-date site allocation. Beyond that, the clearest signal of significance is local concern.
Officers are unlikely to take a delegated decision in the face of a community backlash. Every gateway decision is recorded and open to scrutiny, so a nominated officer facing visible, organised objection on a borderline scheme is more likely to refer it than carry the risk alone.
Campaigns will be frontloaded. Opponents will quickly work out that the gateway decision is the new battleground. Expect community campaigns to start earlier, aimed at persuading the officer and the chair that a Schedule 2 scheme is significant enough for committee.
Developers need to get there first. That means identifying the risks at the outset, understanding who is likely to object and why, and dealing with it at pre-application stage, before the gateway decision is made. Objection numbers no longer trigger committee; a credible planning argument does. Engagement that surfaces issues early and resolves them is the best route to a decision by officers.
Expect frustration to find other outlets, too. Ward councillors who can no longer call schemes in can still comment, lobby and campaign, and local press and social media will pick up what committee no longer hears.
What it means for political engagement
Two people now hold the key to committee. The head of planning and the planning committee chair must agree before a Schedule 2 application is referred. Where they have a good, settled working relationship, referral decisions will be predictable. Where that relationship is new, strained or untested, expect friction and inconsistency.
Watch the boroughs that have seen political change. London voted in May and several boroughs changed hands or saw majorities cut. Lambeth now has a Green minority administration with a Liberal Democrat planning chair; Southwark is run by a Green and Liberal Democrat joint administration; Westminster is back under Conservative control. New administrations mean new chairs, new officer relationships and fresh readings of what counts as significant.
The committee chair is the relationship to invest in. As nominated member, the chair no longer just runs the meeting; they are one half of the decision on whether there is a meeting at all. Political engagement has typically centred on the leader and the cabinet member for planning. Those relationships still matter for policy and the local plan, but on individual schemes the focus shifts even more firmly to the chair. On any scheme near the line, brief them early and on the substance.
Ward councillors still matter. They may have lost the call-in, but they can still lobby the chair and officers, speak when an item reaches committee and lead a public campaign when it does not. Treat them accordingly.
Read the guide
Our guide, Who decides now, sets out what the NSD means in practice and how it is being put into effect in every London planning authority and across Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City Region and Greater Cambridge. Register to read it here: https://nsd.lowickhedry.com/
If you’re weighing up what this means for a scheme, live or planned, please get in touch.
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