Woking Planning: Councillor Call-Ins End on 31 October

Woking councillors will no longer be able to send a planning application in their ward to the Planning Committee from 31 October. New national rules say most applications must be decided by council officers. That includes home extensions and housing schemes of up to nine homes.

Full Council will change the council’s constitution to match on Thursday 15 October at 7pm (agenda). It has no real choice. The council’s own report says the changes “are not optional and are required by law” (report WBC26-029).

What changes on 31 October

The rules come from the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026. They split applications into two lists (Schedule 1 and 2).

Must be decided by officers (Schedule 1). These can never go to committee. They include:

• householder applications, such as extensions, loft conversions and garden buildings
• minor residential schemes: one to nine homes on a site under half a hectare
• minor commercial applications
• prior approvals and lawful development certificates
• reserved matters for anything short of a very large outline permission

May go to committee (Schedule 2). Larger housing schemes, listed building consent, retrospective applications and some others start as officer decisions. They only go to committee if two people agree they should: the council’s “nominated member” and “nominated officer”.

Woking proposes that the Chair of the Planning Committee takes the member role and the Head of Planning the officer role. The Deputy Chair and the Development Management Operations Manager would stand in for them.

The test for going to committee

The two must agree that an application raises at least one of:

• issues of economic, social or environmental significance to the local area
• significant planning matters, given the local plan and other material considerations

The report is blunt about what does not count. It says the test “is not a test which is influenced by lobbying, or the number of objections to a planning application.”

Government guidance gives a few examples of “significant”: a big multi-phase housing site allocated in the local plan, the loss of a rural community shop, or changes to a notable listed building in a town centre. A scheme that broadly follows its site allocation in the local plan is unlikely to qualify.

What the council’s rules say now

Under the current constitution, a ward councillor can ask for any undecided application in their ward to go to committee. They have to give a planning reason in writing. Approvals for more than five homes also go to committee as a matter of course.

The report says that from 31 October, “must be delegated to officers” overrides any councillor call-in. It applies to every application decided after that date, even ones submitted earlier. The November Planning Committee will be the first held under the new rules.

Ward councillors can still ask the Chair for permission to speak at a committee meeting about an item in their ward.

Woking objected, but the rules apply anyway

The council told the government in its consultations that the change would affect local democracy. The report says the government “decided to proceed” and the changes are mandatory for every council in England.

If a committee decides an application that should have gone to officers, the decision could be challenged by judicial review and quashed. The government has said so in its guidance, which the report quotes.

Officers also flag one oddity. Tree preservation order and advertisement applications fall into Schedule 2, which in theory sends hundreds a year to the two gatekeepers. Woking proposes that these stay with officers as now, without needing a gateway check each time.

What it means for you

• If you object to a neighbour’s extension, your comments still count and officers must weigh them. But from 31 October there is no route to a committee hearing, however many people object.
• If you are applying for an extension or a small scheme, your decision will come from officers. A councillor cannot call it in.
• For bigger schemes, lobbying your councillor will not move an application to committee by itself. The gatekeepers must find a significant planning issue.
• Every gateway decision will be recorded. Officer reports will say why an application was or was not referred, and the decisions will be reported to the Planning Committee, much like planning appeals are now.

Applicants who are councillors, council staff or the council itself are a special case. Their applications can still go to committee if the two gatekeepers agree.

You can search live applications and comment on our Woking planning applications page. Our planning news page covers the new Local Plan, which will decide where homes go into the 2040s.