Scale and the shift from delegated to committee decision

Most planning applications in England are decided by officers under delegated powers, and the ones that are not are decided by a committee of elected members meeting every three or four weeks. Crossing that line changes the programme by six to twelve weeks on a good run, changes who you are persuading, and changes the risk profile of the decision, because a committee can refuse against officer advice in a way an officer cannot.

Where the line falls is set locally, in the council's scheme of delegation, adopted as part of its constitution under its general power to delegate functions to officers. There is no single national rule, which is why the same scheme can be delegated in one district and reported to committee next door.

Where the line is drawn

Find the scheme of delegation before you design the programme. It is a published document, usually in Part 3 of the constitution, and it lists the categories of application that officers may not determine.

The categories that recur are these. Major development. Departures from the development plan. Applications where the officer recommendation conflicts with a statutory consultee or with the parish or town council. Applications attracting more than a stated number of objections. Applications called in by a ward member, usually with written reasons. Applications by the council itself, by a member or by an officer. And applications requiring a planning obligation above a stated value or of a stated type.

Two of those are within your influence and the rest are not. The objection count and the member call-in are behaviour, not design, and they are the reason a five unit scheme sometimes reaches committee while a forty unit scheme does not.

Major development as the usual trigger

Major development has a defined meaning in the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, and most delegation schemes borrow it.

Crossing into major status does far more than change the decision route. The determination period moves from eight weeks to 13. Affordable housing policy usually engages, which brings an Affordable Housing Statement into the pack. Consultation arrangements change, and further consultees appear, as set out in statutory consultees that appear as a scheme grows.

In Greater London there is a further layer, because scale can also make a scheme referable to the Mayor, with its own two stage process running alongside the borough's committee timetable. The thresholds are different again and are covered in mayoral referral thresholds for London residential schemes.

Local triggers set below the national threshold

Plenty of authorities send applications to committee well below the major threshold. Five or more dwellings is a common local figure. So is any application requiring a section 106 agreement, any application on council owned land, and any scheme in a conservation area above a modest size.

The practical consequence for a small developer is that a nine unit scheme designed specifically to stay under the major threshold can still end up at committee on a different trigger entirely, with all of the timetable consequences and none of the compensating longer determination period.

Read the scheme of delegation as a whole rather than looking only for a unit number. Then read the last six months of committee agendas for that authority, which tells you what actually reaches members rather than what the constitution says might.

What committee does to the timetable

Committee introduces four fixed points, and each can cost a cycle.

1. The officer report has to be drafted, which cannot start until consultation has closed and the recommendation is settled.
2. The report goes through internal clearance, typically legal and management sign off.
3. The agenda has to be published a set number of clear days before the meeting, which is a statutory requirement and is not flexible.
4. The meeting happens on its fixed date, and the next one is three or four weeks later.

Miss the agenda publication date by a day and the application waits for the next cycle. A late consultee response, a revised drawing or an amended section 106 draft in the week before publication has the same effect.

Deferral is the risk nobody programmes for. A committee can defer for a site visit, for further information or for negotiation, which costs at least one cycle and sometimes two. Some authorities also require a second report where members resolve against the officer recommendation, so that the reasons can be tested before the decision is issued.

Against that, the statutory clock keeps running. Extension of time agreements are the normal response, and the planning guarantee, under which the fee becomes refundable where no decision is issued within 26 weeks, is the outer backstop rather than a useful tool.

Speaking, site visits and member briefings

Public speaking rights at committee are set by each authority's own procedure rules: who may speak, for how long, and in what order. Three minutes is a common allowance and it is shorter than everyone expects.

Prepare for it as a distinct exercise rather than as a summary of the planning statement. Members are not planners. They respond to the site, the neighbours, the traffic, the appearance and the local benefit, in roughly that order, and they respond badly to being taken through policy numbers.

Site visits, where the authority runs them, are usually the most valuable part of the process for a scheme that reads badly on plan and well in reality. Where visits are not routine, an invitation is worth extending through the case officer rather than directly to members.

Member briefings and pre-application presentations are offered by many authorities, sometimes as part of a Planning Performance Agreement. Take them, and take them early enough that the design can respond, because a briefing held after the drawings are final is a presentation rather than a consultation. Where community engagement has been part of the process, the Statement of Community Involvement is what members will look at to understand what local people were told.

Designing to stay inside delegation

There is a legitimate version of this and an illegitimate one.

The legitimate version is designing a scheme that really does sit below a threshold and saying so openly: nine dwellings on a site under half a hectare, with the calculation shown, because that is the density the site supports. Officers are used to this and it is unremarkable.

The illegitimate version is splitting a site into sequential applications to avoid a threshold. Authorities assess whether applications form part of a single scheme, and a finding that they do brings back the affordable housing requirement, the major determination period and often a committee report, with the added problem that the applicant's approach is now part of the officer's narrative.

Also weigh what you lose. Major status brings a longer determination period, more structured officer engagement, and on a contentious site a committee resolution that is harder to challenge than a delegated decision. For a scheme with strong policy support and weak local support, delegation is an advantage. For a scheme that needs a judgement call on planning balance, a committee that has visited the site and heard the case can be the better forum.

Programming a committee application honestly

Work backwards from the committee dates, which are published a year ahead.

Pick the target meeting, subtract the agenda publication period, subtract two to three weeks for report drafting and clearance, and subtract the consultation period from that. The date you arrive at is when the application needs to be validated with no outstanding technical issues. On a major application with a section 106, add time for the agreement to be substantially drafted before committee, because most authorities will not issue a decision until it is completed and some will not report the application until the heads of terms are agreed.

Then add one cycle as contingency. Not as pessimism, but because a single deferral or a late consultee response consumes it, and a programme with no contingency turns a normal committee timetable into a missed funding deadline.

Proposals to standardise schemes of delegation nationally have been under discussion in recent reform work, so check whether anything has changed for your authority since your last application rather than relying on the version of the constitution you downloaded last year.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Schemes of delegation, committee procedure rules and local thresholds vary between authorities and are amended, so confirm the current position with your local planning authority or a qualified planning professional before relying on it.

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