Call-in by the Secretary of State under section 77

A Secretary of State call in planning direction under section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 takes the decision on a planning application away from the local planning authority and gives it to the Secretary of State. The authority keeps the file and the officers keep working, but they can no longer grant or refuse. The application is almost always then determined after a public inquiry, on the report and recommendation of an inspector.

Call-in is rare. The published policy is that planning decisions should be taken locally wherever possible, and the power is used selectively where an application raises issues of more than local importance.

What call-in means in practice

The direction has three immediate effects.

The authority's committee cycle stops mattering. Any resolution already passed is superseded, and officers cannot issue a decision notice.

The application is referred to the Planning Inspectorate, which appoints an inspector to hold an inquiry and report to the Secretary of State. On the largest cases, a panel of inspectors may be appointed.

And the applicant becomes a party to an inquiry rather than an applicant to a council. The evidence has to be prepared to inquiry standard, with proofs of evidence, witnesses available for cross-examination and a statement of case, which is a different exercise from a planning submission.

The decision is then taken by the Secretary of State, who is not bound by the inspector's recommendation but who must give reasons for departing from it. A decision contrary to the inspector's recommendation on a matter of planning judgement is possible and does happen.

The published policy on when the power is used

The policy has been set out in written ministerial statements, and the long-standing formulation is that the power is used very selectively, where planning issues of more than local importance arise. The categories identified in that policy include applications that:

• Conflict with national policies on important matters
• Could have wide effects beyond their immediate locality
• Give rise to substantial regional or national controversy
• Raise architectural or urban design issues of real weight
• May involve the interests of national security or of foreign governments

Those are indicative rather than a closed list, and the policy is a statement of practice rather than a statutory test, so the Secretary of State retains a wide discretion. Published call-in decisions in recent years have concentrated on large residential and mixed use schemes in sensitive locations, major energy and infrastructure proposals outside the nationally important infrastructure regime, and schemes raising heritage or Green Belt issues of national profile.

Separately from section 77, certain categories of application must be referred to the Secretary of State by the authority before granting, under statutory directions covering, for example, development affecting the setting of certain heritage assets, or departures from the development plan. Referral is not call-in, and most referrals end with the Secretary of State deciding not to intervene.

Holding directions

A holding direction, made under the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, requires the authority not to grant permission while the Secretary of State considers whether to call the application in. It does not prevent refusal.

That asymmetry matters. An authority minded to refuse can still refuse, after which the applicant's route is an ordinary appeal. An authority minded to grant has to wait.

Holding directions are usually short, measured in weeks, and are lifted either by a call-in direction or by notification that the Secretary of State does not propose to intervene. There is no statutory maximum period, and a direction that stays in place for months is a real commercial problem for a scheme with a funding deadline, with no appeal against the direction itself. Judicial review is the only challenge route, and the discretion is wide.

Where a section 106 agreement is in negotiation when the holding direction arrives, keep the legal work moving. If the direction is lifted, the authority can issue promptly, and the executed deed has to be in place before any decision notice can issue, as our note on varying a section 106 agreement after permission touches on for later changes.

Who can ask for a call-in

Anyone can write to the department asking for an application to be called in, and many people do. Requests commonly come from local campaign groups, amenity societies, national bodies, members of Parliament, neighbouring authorities and occasionally from statutory consultees whose objection the authority proposes to override.

Three things make a request more likely to be considered. A clear explanation of why the issues go beyond the locality, by reference to the published policy categories rather than to the merits of the scheme. Evidence of the controversy, such as the volume and nature of objections. And a maintained objection from a national body.

What rarely works: disagreement with the authority's planning judgement, however strongly expressed, and procedural complaints about how the authority handled the application, which belong in the council's own complaints process or in judicial review.

Applicants should assume a request has been made on any contentious major scheme and should ask the department for confirmation. A short note to the department answering the request, on the question of national importance rather than on the merits, is worth sending.

The inquiry that follows

A called-in application is heard at an inquiry under the rules for inquiries into called-in applications, which run in parallel to the appeal inquiry rules. The procedural shape is familiar: a timetable set by the inspector, statements of case, proofs of evidence exchanged on a set date, a statement of common ground, an inquiry sitting over days or weeks, and site visits.

Two differences from an appeal are worth noting. The authority may be supporting the application rather than defending a refusal, in which case the opposing case is run by objectors with rule 6 party status, and the dynamic at the inquiry changes. And the inspector reports rather than decides, which adds the department's own consideration period after the inquiry closes.

Preparation is the same discipline as any inquiry: identify the issues, close what can be agreed, and get the technical evidence into a state where the witness can defend it. The documents prepared at application stage do most of the work, which is why a thorough Planning Statement and a clean evidence base matter more on schemes that might be called in.

Timescales

Realistic expectations, drawn from the shape of published cases rather than from any guaranteed timetable:

Total elapsed time from call-in to decision of a year or more is common on substantial cases. Build that into the programme and the funding assumptions, because the uncertainty is the hardest part for a client to absorb.

Where the authority had been drifting on determination before the call-in, the non-determination appeal option disappears once the direction is made, which removes one of the applicant's levers. We discuss the underlying choice in our note on appealing non-determination, and whether to wait.

Advising a client whose scheme is called in

Five things to say in the first conversation.

The decision is no longer local, and the local relationships that were being managed matter less than the evidence.

The budget changes. An inquiry is a different order of cost from a planning application, with counsel, expert witnesses and months of case management.

The evidence will be tested by cross-examination, so any technical document that was written to be persuasive rather than defensible needs revisiting now.

The timetable is outside your control, and the honest answer to when will we know is a range, not a date.

And the outcome is a ministerial decision with reasons, which is harder to challenge on planning judgement than a council decision but is challengeable on law. Keep the procedural record clean throughout.

One real uncertainty: call-in practice shifts with ministerial priorities, and the categories that attracted intervention five years ago are not necessarily those attracting it now. Read the recent published decisions in the relevant policy area rather than relying on the general policy statement alone.

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This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.