Amend constitutions for national scheme of delegation of planning functions or face judicial reviews, councils in England warned

This warning comes in statutory guidance, Planning Committees and the National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions: Guidance for local planning authorities in England, issued today (1 June) by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The national scheme of delegation sets out which planning applications go to committees and which to officers.

The MHCLG has also issued the Government’s response to its consultation on the draft regulations and guidance needed to implement the national scheme of delegation and a proposed limit of the size of planning committees to 13.

The government response reveals that many respondents felt that an implementation date of 30 September 2026 did not allow sufficient time for local authorities to amend their constitutions and make the necessary administrative arrangements.

The MHCLG has accordingly pushed back the implementation date of the national scheme of delegation by a month to 31 October 2026 “to allow local authorities further time to make the necessary arrangements”.

The statutory guidance is intended to support local planning authorities in England in implementing the provisions in sections 319ZZC to 319ZZF of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (introduced through section 54 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025) and the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 (the Regulations).

It says: “For the avoidance of doubt, where local planning authorities do not comply with the Regulations from the date they come into force (31 October 2026) and their planning committees make decisions on applications which must be delegated [to] officers, those decisions may be subject to judicial review by anyone aggrieved by the decision. This may lead to the quashing of the decision.”

Later, the guidance adds: “Under the national scheme of delegation, current practices set out in local authority constitutions, such as the power for ward councillors to require cases to be called in for committee consideration or having trigger points for referral to committee if a certain number of objections is reached, will not be possible.

Failure to do amend constitutions to align with the national scheme “may make decisions on whether to delegate applications to officers or refer them to committees for determination liable to judicial review”, it warns.

The statutory guidance covers various aspects of the national scheme of delegation:

• Consideration for referral to committee
• Schedule 1 functions (all the functions which must be delegated to officers for a decision - unless it is an own-interest application)
• Schedule 2 functions
• Own-interest applications (applications which are made - whether or not jointly with any other person - by the authority or an officer or member of the authority or it is an application where, in the view of the nominated officer and nominated member, the authority or any of its members or officers has an interest, are own-interest applications dealt with under regulation 6)
• Treatment of reserved matters applications
• Treatment of section 106 decisions
• Treatment of special control applications
• Transparency and reporting

The statutory guidance also discusses the size of committees. In this respect it says: “Regulation 7 provides for the number of members on a planning committee or sub-committee to be no more than 13. This is a maximum figure to accommodate local planning authorities where members are from multiple political parties. Local planning authorities should consider whether a smaller number of members would be more appropriate in their area to support effective decision making.”