Matthew Pennycook

Matthew Pennycook

Labour — Greenwich and Woolwich

Speaking in the House of Commons on 9 December 2024

Debate

Planning Committees: Reform

Contribution

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He is right about some of the bad decisions that were made in the past. I am a keen student of history and am well aware of some of them, and we definitely take them into account when making our own decisions. On what he said about seizing power from the centre, this is absolutely nothing of the sort. We are proposing a national scheme of delegation to provide consistency in how councils make these important decisions. That involves a national scheme of delegation, which balances vital local democratic oversight with ensuring that planning committees operate as effectively as possible. In instances where local councillors are not making the decisions and applications can be dealt with by trained local planning officers—not by me, or by officials in Whitehall—we think that is the right thing to do, in order to streamline the delivery of essential housing in parts of the country that are crying out for those homes.

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