IN Brief:
- Schedule 1 planning functions must be delegated to officers except for qualifying own-interest applications.
- Schedule 2 cases carry a presumption of delegation unless both nominated decision-makers approve committee referral.
- Ward-member call-ins and automatic objection thresholds cannot continue under the national scheme.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will introduce England’s National Scheme of Delegation on 31 October 2026, restricting which planning functions can be determined by elected committees and requiring local authorities to revise their constitutions.
The scheme establishes two principal schedules. Functions listed under Schedule 1 must be delegated to planning officers, except where a qualifying own-interest application is referred to committee under the separate provisions in the regulations.
Schedule 2 functions will also carry a presumption of officer determination. Referral to committee will be possible only where the authority’s nominated senior planning officer and nominated committee member agree that the application meets at least one of the statutory gateway criteria.
The government says the national framework is intended to improve clarity and consistency while allowing committees to concentrate on applications with significant economic, social, environmental, or development-plan implications.
Local call-in systems will no longer apply
Schedule 1 includes householder development, minor commercial development, and specified minor residential schemes. The residential definition covers developments of up to nine homes on sites smaller than 0.5 hectares, subject to the detailed wording of the regulations.
It also includes a range of technical and procedural functions, including certain reserved-matters applications, discharge-of-condition decisions, prior approvals, certificates, non-material amendments, and functions connected with planning obligations.
Schedule 2 captures planning applications not placed in Schedule 1, alongside listed-building consent and other specified functions. These cases can be considered for committee referral, but the regulations do not require every Schedule 2 application to pass through a separate referral assessment.
Authorities can establish a triage process identifying which cases should be considered by the nominated officer and member. Where no referral assessment is triggered, the application will remain delegated to officers.
Where the officer and member cannot agree, the application must be determined by officers. Committee referral therefore requires a joint decision rather than an individual councillor’s request or an automatic constitutional mechanism.
Existing ward-member call-in powers will not be permitted under the national scheme. Councils will also be unable to send an application automatically to committee because it has attracted a specified number of objections.
Public representations will remain material where they raise relevant planning matters. The change concerns who determines the application, not whether consultation responses, policy conflicts, highway effects, design issues, or environmental evidence must be considered.
Own-interest applications retain a separate safeguard. Applications made by the authority, its officers, or members, or where the authority or those individuals have an interest, can be referred to committee where the nominated officer and nominated member agree.
Authorities must identify suitable senior officers and committee members for the referral role, with cover arrangements to prevent absence or conflicts from delaying decisions. The guidance expects the nominated officer normally to be the chief planning officer or equivalent, while the nominated member should usually be the committee chair or vice-chair.
Each council will retain control over the practical design of its triage process, but it must operate within the national regulations. Constitutions, schemes of delegation, standing orders, referral forms, member protocols, and officer procedures will need to be aligned before commencement.
Transparency requirements will also become important. The government advises councils to keep records of cases considered for referral, the outcome, and the reasons, report them regularly to the planning committee, and make the information available online.
The regulations will cap planning committees and subcommittees at 13 members. Authorities may use smaller committees where they consider that arrangement more effective, but cannot exceed the national maximum.
For applicants, greater delegation could remove delays caused by committee timetables, late call-ins, and deferrals. It does not guarantee a faster decision where an application is affected by validation problems, incomplete technical information, section 106 negotiations, statutory consultation, or unresolved design revisions.
The legal risk of using the wrong route is explicit. Government guidance warns that committee decisions on applications that should have been delegated after 31 October may be challenged through judicial review and could be quashed.
The implementation date was moved to the end of October to give local authorities more time to revise procedures. A statutory review is expected to assess the arrangements after implementation, but councils must first operate the scheme within their existing staffing and application workloads.
The reform will not remove elected members from planning. Councillors will continue to shape development plans, policies, local priorities, and representations, while committees retain applications meeting the referral tests. The immediate task is narrower and more technical: councils must decide how to identify genuinely significant cases without recreating the automatic call-in rules the national scheme expressly removes.
