How England's national scheme of delegation affects councillor call-ins, planning decisions, option agreements and development risk.
In October 2026, while discussing a recently prepared option agreement with a developer client, the conversation turned to planning risk. The client mentioned that, in the view of their planning consultant, councillors could no longer call a policy-compliant, officer-supported application into planning committee.
It was worth testing. The consultant had identified a genuine reform. But the proposition, at least as it reached me second-hand, compressed three different things into one: who decides an application, what the decision will be, and when it will be made. A land agreement cares about a fourth: when a permission is good enough to trigger the contract. Those four certainties do not move together. The gaps between them are where development land deals are won and lost.
The short answer to the consultant's point is that it is largely right for small schemes, only partly right for larger ones, and not right at all as a statement about outcomes.
What has actually changed
Section 54 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, inserted new sections 319ZZC to 319ZZF into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. These allow the Secretary of State to prescribe how English local planning authorities allocate planning decisions between officers and committees. The power has been exercised by the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/854), made on 15 July 2026 and in force from 31 October 2026.
Until 31 October 2026, which applications went to committee was entirely a matter for each council's constitution. Ward-member call-in, referral once objections passed a threshold and automatic referral of plan departures were all local rules, and they varied widely. For the applications the Regulations cover, those local rules fall away. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's statutory guidance states that existing practices such as ward-member call-in and objection-count triggers will not be possible under the national scheme.
The guidance also addresses non-compliance, and two different warnings should be kept apart. The first concerns individual decisions: where an authority does not comply with the Regulations from 31 October 2026 and its committee decides an application that must be delegated to officers, the decision may be judicially reviewed by anyone aggrieved and may be quashed. The second concerns constitutions: failing to amend them may expose decisions on whether to delegate or refer an application to challenge. An unamended constitution makes an unlawful routing decision more likely, but does not of itself decide whether a particular planning decision is valid. That turns on who actually decided the application, and the consequences in any individual case are untested.
Two smaller structural changes sit alongside the scheme. A committee determining a referred application may have no more than 13 members (regulation 7). If a committee fails to meet a size requirement, section 319ZZD disapplies the usual statutory provision that saves the validity of local authority proceedings despite defects in membership. That removes a safety net rather than declaring every such decision void: whether a particular decision is quashed would still be a matter for the court. Separately, section 319ZZA enables regulations requiring committee members to be trained and certified before taking part, although a breach would not affect the validity of decisions. As far as I could establish, no training regulations had been made at the time of writing.
Two points of precision follow. First, this concerns local referral to committee. The Secretary of State's power to call in an application under section 77 of the 1990 Act is untouched, and it is now reinforced by a separate instrument. The Town and Country Planning (Consultation) (England) Direction 2026, signed on 31 March 2026, applies to applications not determined before 11 May 2026 for development including 150 or more homes. Where the authority proposes to refuse, it must consult the Secretary of State, and it must not determine the application until at least 21 days after the Secretary of State has been notified. That direction is not part of the national scheme. But the two move in the same direction: councillors lose the ability to pull applications towards committee, while central government gains a closer view of large refusals. Second, the scheme does not apply to National Park authorities, the Broads Authority, development corporations or the Homes and Communities Agency.
The shorthand that councillors "can no longer call in policy-compliant applications" is therefore wrong in both directions. For many applications, no councillor can secure a committee hearing whether or not the scheme complies with policy. For others, a committee hearing remains possible even where it does.
Schedule 1: decisions that must be made by officers
Schedule 1 applications must be determined by an officer. It covers minor residential and minor commercial applications, reserved matters under most outline permissions, discharge of conditions, non-material amendments, permission in principle and prior approvals. The headline is that housing schemes of one to nine dwellings on sites under 0.5 hectares can no longer reach committee. The statutory definitions do the work, however, and they are narrower than the summary. A "minor residential application" must include only dwellings and incidental development, comprise one to nine dwellings and sit on a site smaller than 0.5 hectares. Nine houses on 0.6 hectares, or six flats over a ground-floor shop, are not Schedule 1. Several other cases also fall outside the officer-only route: an application connected with a listed building consent, any retrospective application under section 73A, and any application in which the council or one of its members or officers has an interest.
"Minor commercial application" is the trap. Some published explainers treat it as commercial development under 1,000 square metres, which is the statistical definition used in planning returns. The Regulations instead adopt the Development Management Procedure Order definition. It covers an application for development of an existing building, or part of one, currently in use for purposes within Part A of the Schedule to the Use Classes Order, together with related approvals. It is excluded if it involves a change of use, a change in the number of units, development not wholly at ground-floor level, or an increase in gross internal area.
Part A was revoked in England in 2020 when Class E arrived, but the 2020 amending regulations provide that, for this definition, the use classes are read as they stood on 31 August 2020. In practice that means the former A1 to A5 uses: shops, financial and professional services, restaurants and cafés, drinking establishments and hot food takeaways. Two consequences follow. A small new-build industrial or office scheme is not a minor commercial application and falls within Schedule 2. And works to a unit in former B1(a) office use are outside the definition, even though offices and shops now share Class E.
Schedule 1 matters most to smaller developers, whose businesses tend to depend on fewer sites at a time. The government's impact assessment, drawing on a sample of 35 authorities, estimates that only around 3% of minor residential decisions were made by committee. On average, then, the risk removed was small. For a developer whose site would have been among that 3%, the change is not marginal: there is no longer any route by which members can decide the application.
Schedule 2: can major applications still go to committee?
Yes. Every application for planning permission that is not a householder, minor residential or minor commercial application falls within Schedule 2. So do listed building consents, retrospective applications, section 73 variations of Schedule 2 permissions, and reserved matters under "large outline permissions" of 500 or more dwellings or 50,000 square metres or more.
The default is still officer determination. A Schedule 2 application goes to committee only if the authority's nominated member and nominated officer agree that it raises either an issue of economic, social or environmental significance to the local area, or a significant planning matter having regard to the development plan and other material considerations. If they cannot agree, an officer decides.
The Regulations simply allow the authority to nominate a member and an officer. It is the guidance, not the Regulations, that expects the nominees to be the chair of the planning committee and the chief planning officer. Because a referral needs both nominees, either can prevent one. As Lichfields has observed, that gives the chief planner the decisive voice.
Policy compliance does not close the gateway. The guidance says that an application broadly complying with a detailed site allocation, the relevant local or neighbourhood plan policies and the national decision-making policies in the National Planning Policy Framework is unlikely to raise a significant planning matter. "Unlikely" is not "cannot". The local-significance criterion is also independent of compliance: the guidance's own example is an outline application for a large multi-phase housing scheme that is allocated in the local plan.
Own-interest applications sit apart. These are applications made by or for the council or one of its members or officers, or in which the nominees consider the authority otherwise has an interest. The nominees may refer them to committee without applying the gateway test at all. Where the landowner under an option is the council itself, that is worth knowing at heads of terms.
Officer support is not permission
The merits test is unchanged. Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires determination in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Section 70(2) of the 1990 Act requires regard to the plan and to any other material considerations. The plan has priority, but it is not conclusive. The House of Lords in City of Edinburgh Council v Secretary of State for Scotland [1997] 1 WLR 1447 confirmed that identifying and weighing material considerations is a matter of judgement for the decision-maker. A plan-compliant scheme can lawfully be refused if material considerations justify it.
National policy has moved in the applicant's favour, but it has not changed that structure. The National Planning Policy Framework published on 17 August 2026 states, in policy S3(1)(c), that proposals according with both an up-to-date development plan and the Framework's decision-making policies "should be approved without delay". Annex A adds that development plan policies materially inconsistent with those national policies should be given very limited weight, unless they were examined and adopted against the new Framework. The Framework describes itself as a material consideration. It operates within section 38(6), not above it. It can strengthen the case for approval considerably, and it can drain weight from out-of-date local policies that might otherwise support a refusal. But "should" is policy, not a statutory duty, and its application still turns on judgement: whether the plan is up to date, whether the proposal accords with it, and what else is material.
Nor does delegation fix the officer's answer. Regulation 2(2) prohibits authorities from limiting an officer's discretion as to how to determine a delegated application.
Where an application lawfully reaches committee, members remain the decision-makers. An officer's recommendation is advice, and members may depart from it on genuine planning grounds supported by evidence and reasons. If they do not, the consequence is an appeal and potentially an award of costs, not an invalid decision. The reform removes the committee's jurisdiction over applications that never reach it. It does not remove its freedom to disagree with officers on those that do.
What it means for development risk
For a genuine Schedule 1 scheme, one discrete risk disappears: the committee overturn. On larger schemes, where that risk arose it was material. Lichfields' research on appeals concerning schemes of at least 50 homes, between January 2021 and August 2024, found that 33% followed a committee refusal contrary to officer recommendation, and that 79% of those appeals were allowed. Winning is not costless either: the impact assessment estimates that an appeal adds around 200 days.
For Schedule 2 schemes, the scale of the change is genuinely uncertain. The impact assessment's central assumption is that the number of major applications decided by committee falls by 30%, within a range of 20% to 40%, an assumption it says reflects informal soundings with authorities. Its tables apply that percentage to the estimated number of committee decisions, so it is a relative reduction, not a fall of 30 percentage points in the share of applications going to committee. Taken at face value, roughly seven in ten major applications that would previously have gone to committee would still do so. But the government itself acknowledges that a robust estimate will not exist until the scheme is in operation. How far the gateway narrows committee involvement will depend on how authorities use it.
The list of what does not change is longer. Merits risk remains, and statutory consultees still respond on their own timetable. Section 106 negotiations, biodiversity net gain, drainage and other environmental requirements, and the resourcing of planning departments are all untouched by the reform. Opposition is also unlikely to disappear with call-in. It is more likely to move to the local plan, to representations addressed to officers, to pressure on the gateway nominees, and to the courts.
A further hypothesis is worth testing rather than asserting. Appeals against committee refusals made contrary to officer advice are a self-selected group. In each case the authority's own professional officer had already judged the scheme acceptable, so a high success rate on appeal is to be expected, and it says little about how appeals generally fare. If the reform removes many of these cases, the appeals that remain may contain a higher proportion of refusals where professional judgement starts against the scheme. Whether that makes a typical refusal harder to overturn is untested and will need post-implementation evidence. The Lichfields figures also concern schemes of 50 or more homes, and should not be read across to small residential sites, for which I have seen no equivalent analysis.
The overlooked consequence: option agreements and conditional contracts
Most commentary stops at who decides. For anyone holding or granting an option, conditional contract or promotion agreement, the better question is what the contract assumed about that decision.
A four-stage review
A developer or landowner reviewing a planning-dependent agreement can work through four questions in order. Each answer feeds the next.
Classification. Which Schedule does the intended application fall into, or is it an own-interest application? Test this against the statutory definitions, and against the scheme as it may evolve during the option period, not just the scheme as first conceived.
Decision-making route. How will the authority actually determine it: by an officer, through the gateway, or at committee? That depends on the authority's amended constitution, its nominees and its published referral practice.
Contractual definition of satisfactory permission. Which planning event does the contract treat as the trigger: a resolution, the issue of a decision notice, or a permission that has survived its challenge period and meets the agreed tests on conditions and obligations? Is that event capable of occurring on the route identified at stage 2?
Longstop, extension and appeal protection. Do the planning period, extension rights and appeal covenants still work on that route, including any provisions keyed to committee events?
The rest of this section takes the main contractual provisions in turn.
Option periods and longstop dates
A planning period is not priced on the median application. It is priced on the plausible bad path: delay, refusal, appeal, challenge. Removing committee overturn risk trims one branch of that tree for Schedule 1 schemes and, sometimes, for Schedule 2 schemes. It does nothing about consultee delay, section 106 negotiation or the appeal timetable. Where a planning period includes an explicit allowance for committee delay, a modest adjustment may be justified. Wholesale shortening is not, and a developer who accepts it may be giving up the time that protects it on appeal.
Satisfactory planning permission
Four moments should be kept separate. A committee resolution to grant, where there is one, is not a permission. Permission is granted when the decision notice issues, and the authority's duty to have regard to material considerations continues until then (R (Kides) v South Cambridgeshire DC [2002] EWCA Civ 1370). A granted permission is not necessarily "satisfactory": its conditions, any section 106 obligations and the expiry of the challenge period remain contractual tests. Only when those tests are met is the contract's planning condition satisfied. Under the national scheme, Schedule 1 applications and unreferred Schedule 2 applications will have no committee resolution at all.
If anything, the reform sharpens the challenge-period test during the transition. A decision taken by a body the Regulations do not permit to take it is exposed to judicial review and possible quashing. An authority whose constitution has not been properly amended is more likely to make that mistake. Challenge-period provisions protect a buyer against exactly that risk.
Planning obligations and appeals
Covenants to submit, pursue and, where advised, appeal remain as important as before. An appeal trigger keyed to counsel's opinion on prospects still works. Any assumption, whether written into the agreement or simply priced in, that a refusal would typically follow a committee overturn of a positive officer recommendation, and so carry good appeal prospects, should be revisited.
Consultation rights
Landowner rights to attend committee will never be engaged for Schedule 1 schemes. For Schedule 2, the moment that matters is the referral decision, which authorities are expected to record and publish. A simple obligation to notify the landowner of the route of determination is enough; a bespoke gateway consultation regime would be over-engineering.
Who captures the benefit?
Suppose the reform does reduce planning risk on a given site. Who keeps the value of that reduction depends less on planning law than on how the land deal is priced. What follows describes economic mechanisms and contractual possibilities, not observed market outcomes.
A developer holding an existing option at a fixed exercise price is best placed: if the site's prospects improve, it captures the improvement without paying more for the land.
In a new acquisition, the position may reverse. If buyers generally come to price lower planning risk into their bids, competition can pass some or all of the benefit to the landowner, through a higher price, a larger option fee, a shorter option period or better overage terms.
Options priced at a discount to market value sit in between. Much depends on the valuation formula, the planning assumptions the valuer is told to make, and the valuation date. If the valuation assumes permission has been granted, a reduction in the risk of obtaining it may make little difference to the price. If it values the land as it stands at an earlier date, it may make more.
Under a promotion agreement, landowner and promoter share whatever benefit arises according to their agreed split, and they bear the residual risks in the same way.
On Schedule 2 sites, where most committee risk survives, landowners arguing for better terms on the strength of the reform will be on weaker ground. On Schedule 1 sites, the argument has more force, but the risks that drive most contingencies are untouched. How value is actually redistributed is a question for evidence over the coming months, not for assertion now.
Existing agreements and pending applications
The Regulations do not amend contracts, but drafting that keys obligations to committee events may not work as the parties expected. A deadline running from "the date of the planning committee resolution" has no obvious starting point for a Schedule 1 application that never goes to committee. An extension that applies "if the application is referred to committee" may never be triggered.
That does not mean such a clause simply fails. Its effect depends on the construction of the agreement as a whole, read in its documentary and commercial context (Arnold v Britton [2015] UKSC 36; Wood v Capita Insurance Services Ltd [2017] UKSC 24). Other provisions, such as an alternative trigger tied to the grant of permission, a general longstop or a definitions clause, may supply the answer. But leaving the outcome to construction invites dispute. The practical step is to identify each committee-dependent provision and check how it interacts with the rest of the agreement on the route the application will now follow.
The Regulations contain no transitional provisions, and the impact assessment confirms that none were intended. Some councils, including New Forest and Shropshire, have published the view that applications still undetermined on 31 October will be dealt with under the new scheme, whenever they were submitted. Less clear is the position where a committee resolved to grant before 31 October but the decision notice issues afterwards. That should be checked with the authority rather than assumed.
Two hypothetical scenarios
These scenarios are illustrations, not market data.
Scenario A: eight dwellings on 0.35 hectares
Assume a straightforward housing application with no listed building connection and no council interest. It is a Schedule 1 application, so no councillor can call it in and no committee can decide it. But the officer may still refuse it, consultees may delay it, and objectors may challenge any permission granted. The option's definition of satisfactory planning permission, its challenge period and its appeal covenants are as necessary as before. The new risk is classification drift. If the scheme grows to ten units, or the red line expands to take in access land and the site reaches 0.5 hectares, the application moves into Schedule 2.
Scenario B: 35 dwellings
This is a major application within Schedule 2. On an allocated site, with a scheme that broadly complies with the allocation and national decision-making policies, the guidance points towards officer determination. On an unallocated or contested site, referral under either criterion is realistic. Either way, the chief planner's view of significance now matters most, which puts a premium on early engagement with officers.
If the developer takes the outline route, the reserved matters application will fall within Schedule 1, because 35 homes is far below the large outline threshold. Committee referral is then possible only at outline stage. That does not mean lighter scrutiny: the reserved matters must still satisfy the authority's policies on layout, scale, appearance, access and landscaping, and the officer may refuse them. What changes is who decides the detail, not the test it must meet. The option period should still accommodate a referral, section 106 negotiation and an appeal. The reform changes the probability of committee involvement, not the length of the worst case.
The democratic accountability question
The government's case is that committees spend too much time on minor applications, that refusals against officer advice are frequently overturned at appeal, and that consistent national rules give applicants certainty. The Local Government Association responds that removing call-in takes away a democratic safeguard, that the gateway lacks a formal dispute-resolution mechanism, and that a standardised national scheme leaves too little room for local circumstances. The concentration of the referral decision in two hands, one of them an officer, is a legitimate concern in its own right.
Some councils have gone further than objecting. Place North West reported on 22 October 2026 that Bolton, Tameside, Central Bedfordshire and Fenland had each refused to amend their constitutions to adopt the scheme. Three things should be kept distinct here: political opposition to the reform, a refusal to amend a constitution, and actually determining applications in breach of the Regulations. The first two do not disapply national legislation; the duties in the Regulations apply regardless. Only the third would expose individual decisions to the quashing risk the guidance describes, and whether any council goes that far will only become clear once applications are determined after 31 October.
My own prediction, and it is no more than that, is that opposition will mostly move elsewhere: upstream to plan-making and site allocation, sideways to officers and the gateway nominees, and downstream to legal challenge. The statutory review due by 31 October 2028 should show whether that is right.
What developers and landowners should do now
Apply the four-stage review to each live application and planning-dependent agreement, starting from the actual statutory definitions rather than the shorthand. Watch the relevant authority's amended constitution, its nominees and its published referral records. And resist the temptation to rewrite agreements wholesale: most well-drafted options will need, at most, targeted adjustment.
The national scheme changes who decides. It does not make the answer yes, it does not make it quicker, and it does not tell you when a permission is safe to rely on. Nor does it say who bears the cost if the answer is no. That was always a question for the contract, and it still is.
For developers and landowners negotiating an option, conditional contract or promotion agreement, the question is whether its planning provisions reflect how decisions will now be made. STM Consultancy is happy to discuss the appropriate transaction structure. Where legal advice or documentation is needed, it is provided through the appropriate regulated legal-services arrangement.
FAQs
Can a councillor still call a planning application in to committee?
From 31 October 2026, no individual councillor can require referral of an application covered by the national scheme. Schedule 1 applications must be decided by officers. Schedule 2 applications go to committee only if the nominated member and nominated officer agree that the statutory gateway test is met.
Are all housing schemes of fewer than 10 homes now decided by officers?
Only if they meet the statutory definition of a minor residential application: one to nine dwellings, only dwellings and incidental development, and a site smaller than 0.5 hectares. Listed building connections, retrospective applications and own-interest applications are treated differently.
Does officer support or plan compliance guarantee permission?
No. Section 38(6) PCPA 2004 is unchanged. The August 2026 NPPF says plan-compliant proposals "should be approved without delay", but that is a material consideration within the statutory test, not an entitlement. Delegated officers keep full discretion.
Does the reform change existing option agreements?
No. Contracts are not amended automatically. But clauses keyed to committee resolutions or referrals may not operate as intended, and their effect will depend on construing the agreement as a whole. Planning-dependent agreements should be reviewed.
What happens to applications submitted before 31 October 2026?
The Regulations have no transitional provisions, and councils including New Forest and Shropshire have said they will apply the new scheme to applications undetermined on 31 October. The position of committee resolutions passed before that date with decision notices issued afterwards should be checked with the authority