Saddleworth Councillor takes planning concerns to Downing Street 

A SADDLEWORTH Councillor has written to the Prime Minister in opposition to proposed changes of planning rules. 

Andy Burnham’s administration is looking to bring in a National Scheme of Delegation – a standardised set of rules for English local authorities.

That replaces local schemes and comes into force on October 31, with the aim of speeding up decision-making and ensuring elected councillors focus only on major, strategic developments. 

But Saddleworth South Cllr Max Woodvine has joined more than 1,000 Conservative colleagues around the country in putting his ‘deep concern’ to the changes on record. 

He feels this would take local knowledge away from what can be an emotive subject. 

In his role as leader of Oldham Council’s Conservative group, he states: “The Government has a stated aim of devolving powers to local communities and empowering them to determine their own future, rather than it being decided from Whitehall. 

“Unfortunately, the National Scheme of Delegation does the exact opposite. It significantly curtails, and in some cases entirely removes, local democratic accountability from the planning process. 

“If the Government is truly committed to pushing power out of Westminster to local communities, planning and determining the future of what homes, businesses and infrastructure are built should surely be at the heart of this agenda. 

“Placemaking should be determined by those who know their places, not a centralised system. 

“Instead, the Government is taking away power from local communities and the councillors they elect to determine smaller applications and restrict their ability to bring larger planning applications to committee, also therefore making it significantly harder for local people to have any say at all in the process.

“It is unfair on planners and it is not right for local communities to not have the councillors they elect make local decisions. 

“If the Government is to action its promise to empower local communities rather than do the exact opposite, a change of course is needed to stop further centralisation of power to Whitehall. 

“If the Government is to encourage housebuilding, they shouldn’t take actions which will make work harder for planners and drive them out of the profession.” 

The Government’s own working paper noted that 96 per cent of decisions in the second quarter of 2024 were made by officers. 

According to the Campaign for Rural England, 2023-2024 saw 86 per cent of all planning decisions approved and decisions only overturned in 2.7 per cent of cases for major applications and one per cent of minor applications. 

Councillor Woodvine, who has sat on Oldham Council’s Planning Committee for more than five years, said: “Planning committees and the councillors who serve on them are not the blocker to building houses, with the overturning of decisions rare and officers deciding applications in the vast majority of cases. 

“Instead of staying with the current process, which is not the cause of the Government’s failure on its own housing targets, the Government may be about to slow the planning process even more.”