The central government is mandating that certain types of minor planning applications can no longer reach planning committee, effective from November 2026. But Camden’s planners are using this as a pretext to effectively abolish councillor oversight and community involvement on almost all planning decisions, going significantly further than that recommended by central government.

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The balance of power in planning, conservation, and community involvement in Camden has been shifting significantly in recent months, influenced both by the result of the latest local elections and incremental reforms to planning being made by central government. The long-term outcome of these changes remains unclear for now, although generally it seems that power is shifting away from the planners and further towards councillors, conservation, and community.

However, a seemingly minor alteration to an obscure piece of legislation is set to potentially shift decision-making power back behind closed doors and into the hands of unelected planning officials. And Camden’s planners are using this reform as a pretext to maximise control of planning decisions without external scrutiny from councillors and the community.

Background

Under the current arrangements, any planning application in Camden can potentially reach the full planning committee, to be determined by councillors rather than by planning officers. This is mediated by the Members Briefing Panel (‘MBP’), a panel of three councillors who can decide to refer a planning application to full committee where there are outstanding community objections to a proposal.

The mere existence of the panel, and the bureaucratic overhead associated with referral to the panel, act as a key check to the decision-making powers of planning officers. It prevents or at least significantly discourages officers from simply ‘ignoring’ outstanding objections to a planning application.

However, the central government is implementing a reform to this system across the country, which would see many ‘minor’ applications blocked from ever reaching the planning committee. It is also altering the legal procedure by which other applications could reach committee. Under the new arrangements, the final decision on whether an application could reach committee would formally be made by the chief planning officer (or similar) and chair of the planning committee (or similar), rather than a subcommittee such as the current MBP.

However, several applications are still permitted to reach committee, including listed building consents, advertisement consents, works to protected trees, and any ‘non-minor’ applications. Any ‘major’ application (concerning a site of over 1000sqm GIA) will automatically be referred to the committee, as is the current arrangement.

This reform throws the current MBP referral system into disarray, as it cannot legally continue to operate as it has done to date. It also requires alterations to Camden’s constitution and the Statement of Community Involvement to reflect these reforms. How outstanding objections to applications are handled, how applications are referred to committee, and what replaces the MBP is up for debate and must be decided by November 2026.

A Pretext for a Power Grab

In response to this, the planning department has published proposed alterations to Camden’s constitution, to be considered by various committees over the coming weeks.

On the face of it, the proposed alterations are solely intended to comply with central governmental reforms, and the report is presented in this spirit. But the detail of the proposals is in fact far more restrictive than is necessary for compliance, and would have the effect of excluding community and councillors from influencing almost all planning decisions.

In particular:

• Any form of Members Briefing Panel would be entirely abolished. There would be no intermediate level of community/councillor scrutiny on non-major planning decisions.
• Several applications which central government makes eligible for planning committee referral would be blocked from reaching committee in Camden. These include listed building consents, works to protected trees, and advertisement consents.

It would be a mistake to assume that these proposals are incidental, accidental, or simply inevitable as a result of central government reforms. It is quite a clear attempt to wrest power away from public scrutiny and to empower planning officers to approve applications without needing to consider or address objections from councillors and the community.

Abolition of the Members Briefing Panel

The Members Briefing Panel cannot continue to function in the way that it currently does, as this would simply be illegal from November 2026. As such, reforms to the MBP or some sort of replacement are necessary for legal compliance. However, it is not a requirement of the reforms that such panels are abolished entirely, and legal opinions published online support the view that such panels can continue to exist in an amended format.

In particular, while the formal power of the MBP to ‘call in’ applications to committee will no longer exist, there is no reason why a committee of councillors could not be established to consider outstanding objections to planning applications, and to advise the head of development management and planning committee chair on whether a call-in is recommended, or to advise officers to make amendments to avoid a call-in. The work of this panel would broadly align with the current MBP, maintaining a degree of scrutiny over the planning department and probity in decision-making.

Indeed, the central governmental reforms explicitly consider this to be a useful idea, especially for councils where such referrals are a frequent occurrence, as is the case in Camden. But rather than discuss this idea, or even to present it to councillors for consideration, the planning department has conveniently entirely omitted this from its report. The amended constitution would not allow for any such panel, reserving scrutiny over the department almost solely for the head of the department itself.

Unnecessary Exclusion of Certain Planning Applications

There is also no reason to exclude listed building consents, works to protected trees, and advertisement consents from being referred to committee. These types of applications are particularly sensitive, and require the input of amenity societies, councillors, and occasionally national amenity societies and Historic England. Central government has explicitly excluded these types of applications from its reforms, presumably in recognition of these matters.

The planning department states that this step is proportionate as these applications are rarely contentious and are almost always determined through delegated powers. This is effectively misrepresentation, as listed building consents and advertisement consents in particular frequently raise community and amenity society objections. While they may technically be usually determined through delegated powers, they are often still referred to the MBP (then determined by delegated powers), and amendments may be made specifically to avoid MBP referral. As such, it is misleading to suggest that reserving such applications solely for planning officers would not alter the current decision-making processes and balance of power in Camden.

It is also somewhat difficult to understand why Camden, with its high density of listed buildings and commercially intensive areas, especially in Central London, should be excluded from scrutiny on these types of applications when this would not typically be the case across the country.

Members Briefing a Flashpoint Once Again

Long-time readers of this blog will recall the incident in 2021 where the planning department employed a KC (then a QC) to help overrule the Members Briefing Panel to avoid a full committee referral. This was perhaps the first incident where the power struggle between planning officers and councillors was on full show, with councillors providing interviews and information directly to myself to shed light on this matter. It was of sufficient general interest to be published in the Planning in London journal.

To me, it is quite clear that the latest governmental reforms are being used as a pretext to finally rid the planners of the ‘inconvenience’ of councillor oversight and community input into their decision-making, reducing planning in Camden to a purely technocratic exercise. There seems to be no recognition whatsoever of the value of community/councillor input, nor that the planning department should be working in the interests of councillors and the community, rather than them being seen as an ‘inconvenience’ to planning.

This ‘cultural’ attitude towards planning and community does seem to be reserved to the upper management of the planning department, with the same individuals behind the 2021 incident behind the currently proposed reforms. In my experience, almost all planning and conservation officers at Camden managing planning applications attach at least some value to consultation, and respond positively to comments and / or objections to proposals. In some sense, the attempt to rid Camden of the MBP and community input is more a matter of principle and ideology than addressing any practical issues in the planning process.

What Now?

Various committees are still to be presented with the proposed reforms over the next week or so, and as such I hope that a decision on this will be deferred so that councillors can properly consider how to respond to the central reforms. Should councillors be sufficiently motivated to maintain scrutiny over the planning department, the currently proposed alterations to the constitution could be shelved, with a new panel being set up to replace the existing MBP. Indeed, it is difficult to see why councillors would assent to relinquishing quite significant decision-making powers to planners, without any apparent benefit to themselves, except through the general Camden apathy that seems to pervade most decisions.

In the long run, it will be interesting to see whether this reform to the planning process will continue to hold under the imminent Burnham government, as he frequently makes positive noises about community involvement, local decision-making, and devolution of central power. The current reform is but the latest in a series of very short-sighted, incremental, and counterproductive reforms to planning made by the Starmer government over the past two years, all of which have tended to consolidate power in the hands of planners at the expense of everyone else.¹

However this plays out, it will be an interesting test as to where the balance of power lies between the planning department and elected members.

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Further updates will be provided as they become available, as this is a rapidly evolving situation…

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1. It seems that a senior planning official in Whitehall has been making quite piecemeal reforms to planning purely in the interests of planners and at the expense of everyone else. Only a few months ago the power for applicants to appeal planning refusals was significantly reduced, giving planners a blank cheque to refuse applications with little repercussion or oversight. The latest reform seems to be in the same spirit – allowing planners to approve applications with little repercussion or oversight. ↩︎