Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2025: New proposals for planning committees

Yesterday, we finally got our hands on the PIB 2025.  This has been promised for some time and there was a lot of speculation regarding what was proposed for planning committee members and how they will (or won’t) be dealing with planning applications in the future.

The key parts of the PIB 2025 relating to planning committee members are contained in clauses 45 and 46.

Training requirements

Clause 45 of the ‘PIB 2025’ will insert after section 319 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 a new section 319ZZA for the Secretary of State to make regulations for and in connection with the training of members of local planning authorities in the exercise of their planning functions.  However, such regulations must deal with a requirement for satisfactory completion of training for any member of the local planning authority before they are allowed to sit on the planning committee and determine planning applications.  This will mean that unless the member has what they are referring to as a “certificate of completion” then they can’t get involved in exercising any planning committee related functions.  The training will be compulsory, and a record will be kept and published on the local planning authority’s website for all to see. 

We will wait for the Regulations, but all local planning authorities should provide regular training for planning committee members to ensure good decisions are made on planning grounds.  We already provide training for members on planning committees on a regular basis in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.

Delegation

Clause 46 of the ‘PIB 2025’ will insert a new section 319ZZC into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 a provision to allow the Secretary of State to make regulations to require a local planning authority to make clear what is to be delegated to officers and what is to be delegated to planning committee.  These arrangements must then be complied with.

This is mainly due to the belief that schemes of delegation throughout the country are not sufficiently clear, which leads to confusion. 

From the Factsheet on Planning committees (published 11.3.25) the Government states: ‘The issues the government is seeking to addressed are as follows: First, many local schemes of delegation are not sufficiently clear about whether an application will go to committee. This can cause uncertainty for developers, as the way a decision is made may not be agreed until the last minute.

‘Second, too much time is spent considering applications which are compliant with the local plan, especially where the development would be on an allocated site and where there are clear policy requirements for the site in the local plan.

Third, in some of these instances the development is rejected against officer advice only to be overturned on appeal, delaying appropriate development and wasting taxpayers’ money.

Fourth, there can be insufficient understanding among all committee members of planning principles and law, inhibiting their ability to make decision in line with these principles and law, in turn making these decisions more vulnerable to be overturned on appeal.

Fifth, there is a lack of transparency of the consequences of committee decisions – especially if a committee refuses an application and there is a successful appeal with costs awarded against the local planning authority.’ 

The Birketts view

We will need to wait for the Regulations, but we can only imagine that the aim is for a lot more to be delegated and only a fraction of applications should come to planning committee.

So, in summary we (as the case with a lot of legislation at the moment) need to await the regulations (if made) before we can take any action to address these clauses of the PIB 2025.