Will your application still need to go to planning committee in November?

If your planning application is approaching determination, or has been scheduled for a November committee meeting, it may be worth checking whether the reasons for referring it to committee will still apply.

An applicant may already have been told that committee determination is required because a councillor has called the application in, the parish council objects, or a specified number of objections has been received. However, changes taking effect on 31 October could alter that position, including for applications already in the system.

This is particularly relevant where an extension of time is being sought to accommodate a committee date. Before agreeing that an application must wait until November, it would be sensible to establish whether it will still require a committee decision.

What is changing?

The Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 come into force on 31 October 2026. They introduce a national scheme governing which applications must be determined by officers and the circumstances in which others may be referred to committee.

Importantly, the Regulations contain no transitional provision preserving the existing arrangements simply because an application was submitted or validated before that date. An earlier call-in under a council’s existing constitution does not, of itself, establish a lawful basis for committee determination once the new requirements apply.

For an application still awaiting consideration, the intended decision-making route therefore needs to be assessed against the new scheme.

What must councils do?

Councils covered by the scheme must have compliant arrangements in place when the Regulations take effect. This requires reviewing their constitutions and schemes of delegation and amending provisions which conflict with the new requirements.

The statutory guidance expressly identifies unilateral ward-member call-ins and automatic referral thresholds based on objection numbers as practices which cannot continue. Councils will also need arrangements for considering referrals through the nominated officer and nominated member.

There is also a maximum of 13 members on committees determining applications under the new arrangements.

These are not changes which a council can postpone by retaining its existing constitution. The Government warns that committee decisions on applications which should have been delegated could be challenged and potentially quashed.

Which applications will go to officers?

The Regulations establish two broad categories.

Schedule 1 applications must be determined by officers. These include householder applications, Class Q and other prior approvals, lawful development certificates and certain minor residential proposals. There are exceptions, including where a planning application is connected with listed building consent, and separate provisions for applications involving the interests of the council, its officers or members.

Schedule 2 includes other applications, such as larger housing proposals. However, inclusion in Schedule 2 does not mean that committee determination is required. Officer determination remains the default.

The distinction is therefore between applications which must be delegated and those for which committee referral may be available, subject to the relevant requirements.

What makes a planning matter significant?

This is likely to be the principal area of dispute.

Under regulation 5, the nominated officer and nominated member may agree to refer a Schedule 2 application where, in their view, 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. Without an agreed referral, the application must be determined by an officer.

The words “in their view” expressly introduce an element of judgment. However, identifying a planning issue is not the same as explaining why it is significant.

Highways, drainage, landscape and development-plan conflict arise routinely in planning applications. If merely identifying one of those matters were sufficient, the requirement for significance would achieve very little.

The guidance provides some assistance. Paragraph 24 indicates that a technical concern is unlikely to qualify where the proposal has been modified to make it acceptable to the statutory consultee, unless the nominated officer has compelling reasons otherwise.

An issue which generated considerable objection earlier in the process may therefore no longer provide the same justification for referral once the proposal has been amended. Continuing opposition does not, by itself, explain why the resolved issue remains significant.

Nevertheless, there is a separate route through local economic, social or environmental significance. The guidance expressly recognises that this can justify referral even where no significant planning matter arises.

A housing proposal may be technically acceptable whilst still representing a significant change for the village in which it is proposed. Resolving every technical objection would not necessarily remove that justification for committee consideration.

This leaves an obvious tension. The Regulations establish officer determination as the default, but the circumstances permitting referral involve judgments on which reasonable people may disagree. Applicants may regard a proposal as a straightforward application of policy; officers and members may consider its local consequences sufficiently significant to warrant committee scrutiny.

The practical question will be how that significance is explained. Simply replacing “objections received” with “significant local concern” would do little to demonstrate that the statutory test has actually been applied.

For applicants with decisions expected around the end of October or committee dates scheduled for November, that is the question worth asking now: what is the particular issue which justifies referral under the new Regulations?