Shadow Housing Minister warns of planning reform backlash
Kevin Hollinrake says he supports Labour's efforts to build 1.5m homes but says reduction of democracy in planning will soon cause a furore.
The Shadow Housing Minister Kevin Hollinrake (main image) has warned that Labour’s attempt to take planning decisions away from councillors and hand more power to experienced local planning officers will backfire.
Speaking during an interview with social housing sector news website Inside Housing at the MIPIM gathering in Cannes, Hollinrake broadly welcomed most of the measures within the Planning and Infrastructure Bill now going through parliament, but warned over “moving the democratic accountability of local authorities to public” by giving unelected officials more decison making power.
Hollinrake, who founded the Hunters estate agency chain in 1992 and has been Tory MP for Thirsk and Malton in North Yorkshire since 2015, is referring to Labour’s plans within the Bill to remove councillors from planning decisions on smaller housing developments and exclude them the later stages of their development journey, although local councillors will still have a say on larger schemes and continue to set their local plans.
Nevertheless, he tells Inside Housing that: “Technocracy sounds like a good idea, just officers making these decisions, but limiting councilors’ oversight of local planning decisions to the local plan is going to cause a lot of problems for local people.
Backlash
“You’ll see the backlash in time as people realise that they’re not going to have influence over planning applications through their local councilor.”
Propertymark has made similar points, saying: “what’s key is that local knowledge is utilised effectively, and local democracy is fully considered and enhanced when it comes to planning decisions”.
The Local Government Association agrees, and has pointed out that 96% of planning applications are already decided by officers and 90% of applications are approved, and that the lesser role for democracy in the planning process is out of proportion to the problem, and that taking action on land supply and forcing house builders to build greater numbers of homes are more important issues.
