Prefer to listen?
This article is also available as a podcast episode
The biggest procedural change to small planning applications in a decade comes into force on 31 October 2026, and it removes something most small developers have spent years managing around: the risk that a straightforward application gets pulled into a planning committee.
The Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 were made on 15 July 2026 and take effect at the end of October. England only; National Park authorities and the Broads Authority are excluded. The original target of 30 September slipped by a month because councils said they needed longer to amend their constitutions.
Schedule 1: officers decide, full stop
These must be determined by officers. There is no route to committee at all:
- Householder applications
- Minor residential: 1 to 9 dwellings on sites under 0.5 hectares
- Minor commercial
- Permission in principle
- Reserved matters, other than for “large” outline permissions
- Prior approvals
- Section 73 applications where the original permission was Schedule 1
- Section 96A non-material amendments
- Certificates of lawfulness, existing and proposed
- Biodiversity gain plan approvals
- Section 106A modification requests connected to Schedule 1 permissions
If your scheme is in that list, committee risk is gone. Not reduced — gone.
Schedule 2: delegated by default, with a narrow gate
Larger schemes, listed building consent, section 73A retrospective applications, phased or large reserved matters (500-plus dwellings or 50,000-plus square metres), advertisement consent, TPO works, and applications by the authority, its members or officers all sit in Schedule 2. These are delegated by default and can only reach committee through a gateway test.
The gateway requires both:
- (a) the nominated officer — usually the chief planning officer — and the nominated member — usually the committee chair — to agree; and
- (b) at least one of two criteria: the application raises an economic, social or environmental issue of significance to the local area, or a significant planning matter having regard to the development plan and other material considerations.
Statutory guidance says referral should be “exceptional rather than routine.” Committees are also capped at 13 members. The Secretary of State must review the regulations by 31 October 2028.
Where medium sites sit
This is the live question, and it is worth being straight about the uncertainty.
Schemes of 10 to 49 dwellings — the new NPPF medium development category — appear to sit in Schedule 2, not Schedule 1. Specialist readings of the statutory instrument put medium schemes in the 10-to-499 band that is gateway-testable, and analysis of the draft regulations earlier in the year said the same. I have not found any source placing 10 to 49 in Schedule 1.
So treat medium sites as Schedule 2: officer determination as the default, with a gateway that should be used exceptionally. Practically, that means building the anti-referral argument into your covering letter. Pre-empt the “significance to the local area” limb: explain why this is an ordinary application of adopted policy, not a scheme raising an issue of local significance. You are writing for the nominated officer who has to decide whether to take it to the chair.
What to stop doing, and what to start
The behavioural change is bigger than the procedural one, because a great deal of small-scheme planning strategy has been organised around committee risk.
Stop:
- Budgeting for committee risk on 1-to-9 unit schemes. It does not exist any more.
- Political lobbying spend on minor residential. Ward member engagement is still worth doing for relationship reasons; it is no longer a route to a decision.
- Timing submissions around committee cycles.
- Preparing committee presentations for schemes that cannot reach committee.
Start:
- Investing the saved effort in the officer relationship and in a clean, policy-compliant submission. The officer is now the decision-maker rather than a recommender, and the quality of what lands on their desk is the whole game.
- Getting the validation list right first time. With no committee stage to absorb delay, validation and the officer’s own timetable are the programme.
- Writing the report the officer would write. A submission that gives an officer the policy analysis, the material considerations and the reasoning in a form they can adopt is faster than one that makes them build it.
- Treating objections as an officer-management issue rather than a political one. Objections still matter, but they matter to an officer applying policy, not to a committee weighing local feeling.
The programme benefit is real
For an SME, the value is certainty rather than speed. A minor application that previously carried a small but material chance of a committee deferral — with the four-to-eight week cycle that implies, plus the risk of a refusal against officer recommendation and a subsequent appeal — is now a determination on an officer timetable.
That changes what you can promise a funder, and it changes the risk profile on an option or conditional contract with a planning long-stop.
Two adjacent changes worth knowing
Biodiversity gain plan approvals are in Schedule 1. A gain plan discharge that could previously be pulled into a committee cycle is now an officer decision. Combined with the 0.2 hectare BNG exemption that came in on 6 August, the discharge burden on genuinely small sites has dropped considerably in two months.
Statutory consultee reform is coming but has no date. The government response published on 17 August removes the Gardens Trust and the Theatres Trust as statutory consultees, narrows Sport England considerably, reduces Historic England notification for Grade II cases, and raises Active Travel England’s residential threshold from 150 to 250 units. Watch National Highways, though: consultation is now triggered where a transport assessment is needed, replacing the blanket minor development exclusion — which can cut both ways for medium sites. Regulations “will follow in due course” and no commencement date has been published.
And the fee change behind it
While you are re-planning submission timing: planning fees rise on 8 December 2026, re-priced to roughly 90% of cost recovery, and the trigger is the date of submission. Discharge of conditions rises about 50%, section 73 for major development by just over 50%, and prior approval moves to a flat charge where many were previously free.
If the delegation change makes you re-sequence a submission programme, factor the fee date into the same exercise.
If you run a pipeline of minor and medium applications and want the submission strategy re-set around officer determination rather than committee risk, that is a short piece of work with a measurable programme benefit.
One response
[…] From 31 October, Your One-to-Nine Unit Scheme Cannot Go to Planning Committee […]