Parish Council calls for rethink over new planning rules

Community leaders in Durham City are calling on the Government to rethink new planning rules which it fears will remove an important democratic safeguard from local planning decisions.

The City of Durham Parish Council has written to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Durham MP Mary Kelly Foy, raising concerns about the proposed National Scheme of Delegation for planning applications, which will see only large-scale development proposals going to Planning Committees for their determination.

The Parish Council has said that while it fully supports routine and uncontentious applications being decided by professional planning officers it strongly opposes removing the ability of parish and town councils and their elected councillors from ensuring that contentious applications are considered publicly by a planning committee.

The Council argues that this power has always been used responsibly by them. In 2025 it reviewed all 165 planning applications affecting Durham City, submitted comments on 37 and called just six applications to committee.

The Parish Council has also highlighted that, where it has used its call-in powers, the Government’s Inspector has regularly supported the Parish Council’s recommendation over that of the County Council’s officers and points to cases such as a significant student development at Larches Road in North End and an overdevelopment of town houses along the A167 as two prime examples of where democracy won the day.

Unless the proposed scheme is changed, the Parish Council warns that this vital local safeguard could be lost from 31st October if the new scheme comes into force.

The Town and Country Planning Association has described the proposals as a “threat to local democracy” and warned that communities and councillors risk becoming “bystanders in the development of their own neighbourhoods.”

Planning Committee Member Coun. Roger Cornwell, who represents the Neville’s Cross parish ward, echoed those concerns and stressed: “Nobody is arguing that every planning application needs to go before a committee. Most don’t, and our figures show that we use the call-in power very sparingly. But planning decisions which may appear small from Whitehall can have a major impact on the people who actually live next door to them. When there is genuine local concern, residents should have the right to ask their elected representatives to ensure those concerns are heard in public”.

He added: “Taking that safeguard away is the complete opposite to devolution. We are asking the Government to think again and find a way of making the planning system efficient without removing local democracy from it.”

Long serving local councillor Dr Grenville Holland has observed that the new Prime Minister wants Britain “to believe again.  The Prime Minister has promised to give communities more power, to create a country where everybody feels a part of what is happening, a country where everybody feels that they are heard.”

“In reality,” Dr Holland added, “what his government actually plans for October 31^st will ensure that no one will be heard because his government will have silenced all our local communities.  Their voices, and the views of the people they elect to represent them, will be missing when important local planning decisions are made.  The Prime Minister has just 2 months to make good his promise.”

The Council has also asked Mary Kelly Foy MP to press the Government for a rethink, and applauded her vote on 8 July against approval of the draft regulations and her new role as PPS to the Planning and Housing Minister.