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The Government’s new draft guidance on planning committees, published on 26 March 2026, points to a major change in how planning decisions may be made in England.  The core idea is straightforward: more routine and technical decisions should be made by officers, with planning committees focusing only on genuinely significant proposals.  The most notable practical change is that familiar local mechanisms such as ward member call-ins and committee referral based purely on objec

A recent North Warwickshire appeal decision is a useful reminder of how strongly housing land supply is now influencing outcomes. The Inspector allowed up to  39 dwellings at Newton Regis  even though the scheme conflicted with the settlement hierarchy and was found to be disproportionate in scale for a small village. The reason was simple: the Council could only show  around 2.2 years of housing land supply , so the benefits of delivering housing, including  40% affordable h

Draft NPPF consultation: what it means for SME housing and strategic sites The Government is consulting on a revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and related reforms aimed at improving delivery and certainty. For most landowners and SME developers, the immediate relevance is practical: the draft direction of travel is likely to shape how LPAs negotiate, how applications are evidenced, and what Inspectors expect to see at appeal. The parts most likely to affect li