Tameside council is still breaking the law after its latest vote rejected government planning reforms, despite an extraordinary meeting being called to address the issue. The authority voted against new rules on how planning applications are approved or denied, which came into effect on October 31.
This mirrors the outcome of last month's full council meeting. Tameside is one of four councils in the country openly rejecting the planning reforms, alongside Bolton, Fenland and Central Bedfordshire.
What the new planning rules mean
The government changes will reduce the power of planning committees by cutting their maximum size to 13 members and limiting the number of applications they decide on. Under the new rules, planning applications would be split into two tiers – Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 – designated by planning officers.
Schedule 1 includes smaller and more technical applications that would only be handled by planning officers. Schedule 2 covers larger applications, which may be brought before the planning committee if agreed by the committee chair and the council's chief planning officer.
Local authorities across the country needed to change their constitutions to facilitate these changes and continue their role as a Local Planning Authority (LPA). The council's legal officer explained that all planning decisions made in Tameside would now be unlawful and no planning committee meetings can legally take place.
Councillors divided on the reforms
Reform group leader Allan Hopwood repeated his previous stance, saying they were being 'asked to vote with a gun to our heads'. He claimed the Labour government was pushing the reforms because 'pesky residents and councillors' are 'getting in the way' of their 'impossible' housebuilding target.
Labour has vowed to build 1.5m new homes in England across the five-year Parliamentary term. Hopwood believes the reforms are being forced on councils to help meet political promises at the expense of local democracy.
Coun Hopwood added: “I don’t work for Angela Rayner and I don’t work for Andy Burnham. I have been elected by the people of Tameside. I work for their interests and not Number 10’s. I care about the people that put an X in that box.”
Council leader urges compliance
Speaking at Dukinfield Town Hall on November 3, Council leader Eleanor Wills urged councillors to vote for the constitutional changes. She warned that continuing in this way would 'stall future developments' and 'open the local authority up to costly legal challenges' to planning decisions.
“We are tying our own hands behind our backs and leaving developments in limbo,” Coun Wills added. “We are going to be discussing the budget soon, when we start to be subjected to costly fines from planning, where will we cut to pay for them? Look past the politics and look to our legal limits.”
Conservative group leader Andrea Colbourne said her group's position hasn't changed, describing the changes as taking 'decisions further away from communities'. She felt members of the public 'expect openness and transparency' and an 'open role to have a say about the places they live'.
Conservative group deputy Coun Phil Chadwick added: “We are here because this Labour government believes local councillors are too much trouble. The responsibility of this lies with the government who brought in this legislation, not the local residents or local councillors.”
He noted that under the new rules, the 8,000 objections raised against the controversial Godley Green development for 2,150 homes may not see that application brought before the planning panel, questioning the democratic nature of this.
Tameside Independent Group leader Coun Ged Cooney said the debate was one of the best he'd seen in years, calling it their democratic right to come to the town hall and do that – something these changes would take away from the people.
Deputy leader Coun Andrew McLaren, in a local government take on Shakespeare's Hamlet, said 'to be legal, or not to be legal – is the question here today'. He said lots of councillors are 'really hacked off' about the reforms but are agreeing with them 'through gritted teeth', pointing to Reform-led councils in Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Durham that have already agreed to the changes.
Despite Labour's efforts, the vote failed with 29 votes against and 26 votes for the changes. This means nothing will change and the council will continue to act unlawfully.
The Manchester Evening News understands that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG) position is that after October 31, local planning authorities must determine all planning applications in accordance with the new rules. If their constitutions have not been updated, as is the case in Tameside, their planning panel will be operating outside these rules and all decisions will be made by planning officers by default. This also means no planning panel meetings in Tameside will be held until further notice.
