From 31 October, home extensions and schemes of up to nine homes must be decided by officers. Bigger schemes reach committee only if two people agree.

From 31 October, Harborough’s councillors will no longer be able to call in a planning application for their committee to decide. New national rules take the choice away from the council. Many applications must now be decided by planning officers, whatever the level of local objection.

The change comes from the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026. The government made them on 15 July and they come into force on 31 October. They apply to every planning authority in England.

Harborough District Council met on Monday 28 September to adopt its own version of the rules. Councillors were asked to approve a revised planning scheme of delegation, to take effect on 31 October. The council has not yet published the decision; the minutes normally appear at the next meeting. The report is plain that “most of the changes proposed are required to comply with the law, and as such there are no viable options”.

What officers must now decide

The regulations list applications that must be decided by an officer, never by committee. The ones residents meet most often are:

  • householder applications, such as extensions, loft conversions and garages
  • minor residential applications: one to nine homes on a site smaller than half a hectare
  • minor commercial applications
  • reserved matters, the detailed design that follows an outline permission, unless the outline permission is for 500 or more homes or 50,000 square metres of floorspace
  • certificates of lawful use, prior approvals and applications to discharge conditions
  • small, “non-material” changes to an existing permission

Three exceptions bring an application back into the wider group. They are retrospective applications, applications linked to listed building consent, and applications made by the council itself, its councillors or its staff.

How bigger schemes reach committee

Everything else, including major housing schemes, can go either way. Under the new rules, an application goes to the planning committee only if two people agree it should. In Harborough those two will be:

  • the Chair of the Planning Committee
  • the council’s Head of Service: Development Management

If they cannot agree, the law says an officer decides.

They can refer an application only if it raises “an economic, social or environmental issue of significance to the local area”, or “a significant planning matter”. The national guidance adds that a scheme which broadly matches a site allocation in a local or neighbourhood plan is unlikely to meet that test. The council’s scheme says “only exceptional cases of significant local importance should be referred”.

What happens to call-ins

Until now, a ward councillor could call an application in to committee. In September, for example, the Kibworth Working Men’s Club conversion was called in by Councillor Phil King and refused by the committee.

Under the new scheme, any councillor can still write in within 28 days of an application appearing on the council’s weekly list and ask for it to go to committee. But the request is only that: a request. The scheme states “there is no provision for applications to be ‘Called-In’”.

Councillors who asked for a referral, and the local ward councillors, may sit in when the decision is made. The scheme warns that any councillor who uses that to “lobby or pressure” the decision-makers will be asked to leave. Other lobbying will be reported to the council’s monitoring officer.

The two will publish a record of which applications they referred and which they did not. That record will go to the planning committee every quarter.

Tree preservation orders and listed buildings

The council had some local choice over tree preservation orders, advert consents and some listed building work. It has chosen to leave them with officers. Councillors on the constitution review committee raised concern about significant trees. Officers explained that tree applications have a short deadline and are approved automatically if it is missed. The committee accepted that. The head of development management can still send an unusually significant case through the committee test.

What it means for you

How you comment on an application does not change. The report says “the same parties will still be consulted and have opportunity to submit representations”.

What changes is who you need to persuade. If you object to a scheme and want councillors to decide it, ask your ward councillor to request a referral within 28 days of the application appearing on the weekly list. Give planning reasons: the test is about significance to the area and material planning issues, not the number of objections.

For householder applications and schemes of up to nine homes on small sites, an officer will decide from 31 October whatever happens. Your written comments to the planning officer are what count.

The council says it will publish plain English guidance on the new referral process. It also says officers will look at sharing draft section 106 agreements with ward councillors, after councillors raised concern that they are not always aware of what is proposed for inclusion in them.

Our planning news page tracks the district’s bigger applications and decisions.

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