Councillors Lose Power to Force Planning Applications to Committee, as National Rules Change Today

From today, councillors and parish councils across West Kent - and every other planning authority in England - lose a power they've had for decades: the ability to force a planning application in front of committee. The change comes from new national legislation, not a decision by any of the four local councils, and it takes effect today, 31 October.

Under the new rules, most routine applications - extensions, minor residential schemes of up to nine homes, and similar "Schedule 1" categories - must now be decided by planning officers alone, with no route to committee at all. Larger or more contentious applications fall into a second group, "Schedule 2," where the default is still an officer decision - but a senior planning officer and the chair of the planning committee can jointly agree to refer it to committee, and only if it clears a specific bar: a significant economic, social or environmental issue for the area, or a significant planning matter under the local plan.

The two routes residents and councillors have traditionally relied on to force a borderline application in front of committee have both been abolished. Asked directly whether councillors or parish councils can still call applications in, Maidstone Borough Council's own guidance is blunt: "No. The new national rules remove councillor and Parish Council call-in powers." The old practice of triggering a committee referral once an application reached a certain number of objections has also gone - the council is explicit that applications "will not be referred to committee solely because a particular number of objections have been received."

The right to comment on an application isn't changing, and anyone can still speak for three minutes at a committee meeting if an application does reach that stage. Councils are also required to publish a record of which applications were considered for referral to committee, the outcome, and the reasoning behind it - intended as the trade-off for removing the old call-in routes.

The change comes from section 54 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, implemented through the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026. The government's stated aim is consistency: committees spending their time on applications that genuinely matter to an area, rather than every borderline case a councillor or a run of objections happens to push there. The guidance isn't optional window-dressing, either - if a council's committee decides an application it should have delegated to officers, that decision can be challenged by judicial review and potentially quashed. Planning committees themselves are also capped at a maximum of 13 members under the new rules.

Of West Kent's four councils, only Maidstone Borough Council has so far published its own explainer. Councillor Tony Harwood, the council's Cabinet Member for Planning Policy and Management, said: "The key message for residents is that their ability to comment on planning applications is not changing. These are national changes being introduced across England... I would encourage anyone with an interest in planning matters to read the information available on our website and familiarise themselves with the changes before they come into effect."

The law applies equally to Sevenoaks District Council, Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council and Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, even though none of the three had published their own resident-facing explainer at the time of writing - worth checking your own council's planning pages if you've got an application you're watching.

Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, "Planning Committees and the National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions" (published 1 June 2026). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Also: Maidstone Borough Council, "Planning changes coming into force from 31 October" (26 October 2026).