Street votes: the power in the 2023 Act and its status

Street vote development orders are a power that exists on the statute book and not yet on the ground. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 inserted a new chapter into Part 3 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allowing residents of a street to propose development, put it to a referendum of their neighbours, and secure planning permission for it if enough of them vote yes. The Act sets the frame. Almost everything that would make a street vote workable, from who qualifies to vote to what a proposal may contain, was left to regulations.

As at 23 September 2026, those regulations have not been brought into force in England, so no street vote development order can yet be made. Check the in-force dates listed on the Act's page at legislation.gov.uk before relying on any description of the scheme, including this one.

What a street vote development order would allow

The idea is narrow and specific. Residents of a single street agree a set of rules for what may be built there, typically additional storeys, extensions, or replacement of houses with a greater number of homes, within limits on height, depth, materials and appearance.

If the proposal passes its referendum, the order grants planning permission for development that complies with it. An individual owner then builds within the rules without applying for permission in the usual way, in much the same manner as permitted development operates, except that the rules have been written and voted on locally rather than set nationally.

The attraction for government was density without an application. The obvious risk is a street agreeing something its neighbours in the next street have to look at.

It is a narrower power than the coverage suggested at the time. A street vote could not authorise a new road, a change of use to a takeaway or the redevelopment of a corner site into flats unless the order itself provided for exactly that, and every order is confined to its own street.

Who could propose one

The Act contemplates a group of qualifying residents making a proposal for the area of a street, with the detail of who qualifies, how a street is defined and what a valid proposal looks like left to regulations.

That detail matters more than the principle. A power exercised by owner-occupiers alone produces different outcomes from one that includes private tenants. A definition of "street" that includes a cul-de-sac and its access road behaves differently from one drawn along a single terrace.

None of those questions can be answered from the Act itself, which is one reason the power has not been used.

And there is a practical point underneath the legal one. Assembling agreement among the owners of a terrace, funding an examination and running a referendum is a substantial undertaking for a group of neighbours with no budget, which is why the equivalent neighbourhood powers have been used far less than their supporters expected.

The referendum mechanism described

The Act follows the model already used for neighbourhood planning: a proposal, an independent examination, and then a vote. A street vote proposal would be examined against prescribed conditions before it went to a referendum, and would need to pass a threshold of support set in regulations, expected to be higher than the simple majority used for neighbourhood plans.

The examiner's role is where most of the practical safeguarding would sit. An examiner able to modify a proposal to make it comply with prescribed development standards is a different animal from one who can only recommend that it proceeds or fails.

The electorate question is equally open. Neighbourhood plan referendums use the local government register for the neighbourhood area, and a street vote would need something narrower, with a rule for flats, for absent landlords and for properties that change hands between the proposal and the poll.

Safeguards and excluded development

The Act allows regulations to prescribe development that cannot be authorised by a street vote, and to set design standards a proposal must meet.

The categories that would be expected on any reading of the Act include development requiring environmental impact assessment, works to listed buildings, and development affecting protected habitats where an appropriate assessment would be needed. Conservation areas and other designations would be candidates for exclusion or for tighter standards.

Until the regulations exist, though, the exclusions are a matter of expectation rather than law. A community wanting certainty about whether a street vote could affect its conservation area cannot get it from the Act.

Interaction with the local plan

A street vote development order would be a permission route, not a plan. It would not allocate land, change local plan policy, or alter the development plan for the purposes of section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

That creates an awkwardness the regulations would have to resolve. A street could, in principle, authorise a form of development that the adopted local plan discourages, and the relationship between the two is the sort of question that ends up in the courts rather than in guidance.

Community infrastructure levy liability, affordable housing contributions and biodiversity net gain would all still apply according to their own rules, and a development permitted by an order is not exempt from the biodiversity gain condition by virtue of the route it took.

Status at the date of writing

The position as at 23 September 2026 is that the enabling power is in force in the sense of sitting in the 1990 Act, and the operational regulations are not made. No street vote has been held in England.

Anyone tracking this should watch three places: the in-force dates shown on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 page at legislation.gov.uk, statutory instruments made under the relevant chapter of the 1990 Act, and written ministerial statements. Government priorities in planning have moved several times since 2023, and a power that requires substantial secondary legislation can sit unused indefinitely.

The planning law timeline is a place to follow reform news, though the statutory instrument itself is the only thing worth relying on.

What communities can do in the meantime

Two existing tools cover some of the same ground and are available now.

Neighbourhood development orders, made under the Localism Act 2011 framework, let a qualifying body grant planning permission for specified development in a neighbourhood area, following examination and a referendum. Community right to build orders work similarly for community organisations. Both are slower than a street vote was intended to be, and both have been used sparingly, but they exist and they have been tested.

A neighbourhood plan with a design code attached is the other route. It does not grant permission, but it does form part of the development plan, which gives it more weight in decisions than a street vote order would have in plan terms.

For householders whose interest in all this is simply building an extension, the existing rights under the General Permitted Development Order already allow a good deal without an application, including larger rear extensions through the prior approval route. That is the mechanism street votes were meant to extend, and for now it remains the one that works.

Where an application is needed, the report index sets out the supporting documents a scheme of that sort usually requires.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.