The English planning system has been undergoing continuous reform for as long as most of us can remember. A lot of that reform has involved small, incremental changes while the fundamentals of the system remained the same: plan-led, with significant applications being determined by elected councillors. At first blush, the latest reforms may again appear incremental. Taken together, however, they amount to something much closer to a big bang.
At the heart of the reforms are the previous government’s Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 (LURA), Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (PIA) and the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) published in August.
Whilst between them, these reforms alone resulted in a plethora of changes to the regimes, this article focuses on three having some of the biggest impacts:
- Changes to the local plan system introduced by LURA;
- Changes to the committee system introduced by the PIA; and
- The relationship between national and local policy following the publication of the NPPF.
New local plans and the three Gateways
For a country with a longstanding plan-led system, we are not historically very speedy at adopting local plans. To address this, LURA introduced a new, streamlined system for their adoption.
Guidance encourages local planning authorities to “start to prepare a local plan as soon as possible in the new system to get an ambitious up to date plan in place”. Transitional arrangements allow plans already under way to proceed under the legacy system, but they must be submitted for examination by 31 December 2026. For all other plans, notice of intention to commence plan making must be given by 31 December 2026 or by the time your plan is 4 years and 8 months old – whichever is latest. New plans will be brought forward under the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026.
For those subject to the new system, gone is the old “regulation 18 consultation”, in are three new gateways with Gateway 1 being the publication of the authority’s self-assessment, which fires the starting gun on a new plan-making timetable. Gateway 2 is where an assessor appointed by the Planning Inspectorate provides early feedback on the draft Plan, and Gateway 3 is where the assessor advises whether the Plan is ready to be submitted for examination. And the metric that has grabbed the headlines: it’s all meant to be done within 30 months of the Gateway 1 assessment.
The National Planning Policy Framework
Added to all this we have the new August 2026 Edition of the NPPF. Annex A provides that,
- “Development plan polices which are materially inconsistent with national decision-making policies in this Framework should be given very limited weight. The only exception to this is where they have been examined and adopted or made against this Framework. Other development plan policies should not be given reduced weight simply because they were adopted prior to the publication of this Framework.”
The introduction states that the planning system should be “genuinely plan-led” and paragraph S3 provides that “development proposals that accord with both an up-to-date development plan and the decision-making policies in this Framework should be approved without delay” alongside a presumption in favour of sustainable development. PM2 requires local plans to set out a spatial strategy to support forthcoming spatial development strategies, policies for the minimum amount of development to be provided, land allocations and broad locations for growth for a period of at least 10 years.
So while the Government hasn’t brought section 93 of LURA into force, which provides for national development management policies to have statutory force, the NPPF will trump local policy which is materially inconsistent with the framework and thereby largely achiever the same outcome.
Planning committees and the National Scheme of Delegation
The PIA amended the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 by adding new sections 319ZZC – 319ZZF with the detail being set out in the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 and the accompanying Guidance. The result is the introduction of a new national scheme of delegation that will be in force from 31 October 2026. It introduces the concept of Schedule 1 decisions, which must in all cases be delegated to officers, and Schedule 2 decisions which must be delegated to officers unless the nominated officer and nominated member agree that the application should be delegated to the planning committee for determination. Government guidance expressly warns local authorities that where their committees make decisions on applications which must be delegated to officers, those decisions may be subject to judicial review.
Schedule 1 matters include householder developments and minor commercial developments, reserved matters, non-material amendment and prior approval applications. Schedule 2 includes applications that are not householder, minor commercial or minor residential applications and listed building applications. Schedule 2 development will be subject to a “triage” system with the nominated officer and member (most likely the Director of Planning and Chair of the Planning Committee) deciding whether the application should be referred to the Committee. The Regulations provide that the presumption should be that a decision is delegated to officers and will only exceptionally be referred to the Committee. For there to be a referral to the Committee, at least one of the following statutory criteria will need to apply:
- A. The application raises an economic, social or environmental issue of significance to the local area. Examples given of development that would fall into this category include applications for outline permission for a large multi-phase residential development and a listed building application for a notable town centre building.
- B. The application raises a significant planning matter having regard to the development plan and any other material considerations. The Guidance adds that a significant planning matter is unlikely to arise where an application for development complies with a detailed site allocation and other relevant policies set out in a local or neighbourhood plan and national decision-making policies set out in the NPPF. In other words, if the development is policy compliant, it will be determined by officers.
If the officer and committee member don’t agree whether an application should be referred to the committee, the default position is that the decision is made by officers.
What this means for you
The development industry has been used to a system that is, by virtue of section 70(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, plan-led but where too often, the primacy of the plan is undermined by the absence of an up-to-date plan and a reliance on “material considerations” to justify a departure from it. That is all set to change and the combination of changes to law and policy, started by the last government and continued by the current one, reflect a calculated shift in the dial as to how planning decisions are made; away from politicians and politics to a policy-led, rules-based administrative system that bears more than a passing resemblance to a mainland European zonal system.
Every area is now required to have an up-to-date local plan and to get the plan updated or in place quickly. The plan must be consistent with the NPPF. Where the plan isn’t up to date or doesn’t exist, the NPPF steps in to provide that only limited weight should be given to policies that aren’t consistent with pro-growth policies in the NPPF. Add to that, the new rule that most applications consistent with the local plan should be determined by officers, and policy S3 of the NPPF that states that policies that are consistent with the local plan or the NPPF should be approved without delay, and it’s clear that policy and local plan compliant development should be fast-tracked.
For developers, there is now a significant incentive to engage early in the development plan process to identify areas where proposals are likely to be supported and to influence allocations in the local plan. Doing so will give proposals a much better prospect of being fast tracked to officer determination and grant of permission.
That is why, despite the familiar language of being “plan led”, these changes amount to something much more fundamental. They do more than adjust the machinery of plan preparation or committee practice: they recast who really makes planning decisions, when those decisions are made, and on what basis. A system that has long relied on local politics at the point of decision is being reshaped into one where the critical choices are made earlier, through a codified and nationally directed plan making process, and then administered. For anyone bringing development forward in England, that means a significant step change in how to secure planning consent.
