The Secretary of State has designated nine local authorities under Section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, removing their power to decide major planning applications. A tenth council, Torbay, faces a separate intervention over its local plan. Here is everything planners, councillors, and residents need to know.
What happened today
On the morning of 15 June 2026, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook MP wrote individually to nine local authorities informing them that their powers to determine major planning applications have been removed with immediate effect. The designations took effect at 09:00 today and, crucially, will remain in force until formally revoked. There is no fixed end date.
The legal mechanism is Section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which allows the Secretary of State to designate a local planning authority when it is considered not adequately performing its function of determining applications for planning permission for major development. This is distinct from financial ‘special measures’, the planning designation regime relates specifically to decision-making performance on planning applications, not a council’s finances or governance.
The nine designated councils are:
| Council | Type | Region |
| South Tyneside Council | Metropolitan Borough | North East England |
| Rossendale Borough Council | Borough | North West England |
| Epping Forest District Council | District | East of England |
| Hertsmere Borough Council | Borough | East of England |
| Dacorum Borough Council | Borough | East of England |
| Cherwell District Council | District | South East England |
| Staffordshire Moorlands District Council | District | West Midlands |
| Malvern Hills District Council | District | West Midlands |
| Wychavon District Council | District | West Midlands |
What designation actually means
Designation under Section 62A does not strip councils of all planning powers. It applies specifically to major development applications, defined as:
- Housing schemes of more than 10 homes, or on sites of more than 0.5 hectares
- Buildings of more than 1,000 square metres of floorspace
- All other developments on land of more than 1 hectare
For applications in these categories, developers now have the option to bypass the council entirely and submit their application directly to the Planning Inspectorate. They are not obliged to do so, they can still apply to the council, but the designation gives them a route around a local authority they may regard as obstructive or slow.
In practice, this is a significant loss of local control. Major housing schemes, commercial developments, and large-scale infrastructure projects can now be determined by a national body rather than democratically elected local councillors. Planning committees that have become accustomed to scrutinising, amending, and refusing significant applications will find those decisions taken elsewhere.
“We operate according to policy and law. Often that makes us very unpopular with our own residents when we are compelled to grant planning permission for developments we would rather not have. But that makes it all the more important that we are able to refuse applications that simply don’t meet our tests of acceptability. Just over 10 percent of those refusals have been overturned at appeal, marginally breaching the government target. The government has decided that is not good enough. It has decided to make it possible to bypass local democracy.” Cllr Chris Whitbread, Leader, Epping Forest District Council
The criteria: why these 9 councils?
The designation criteria were laid before Parliament on 4 December 2024 under Section 62B of the TCPA 1990. Neither House of Parliament resolved that the criteria should not be approved, giving them effect after the 40-day period.
MHCLG applied the criteria using data for the two-year period ending 31 March 2025, together with subsequent appeals decisions to 31 December 2025. The criteria relate to both the speed and quality of decision-making on major development applications.
On quality, the government monitors what proportion of a council’s planning refusals are subsequently overturned at appeal. An appeal overturn rate above a threshold is treated as evidence that the council is refusing applications it should be approving, in other words, that local resistance to development is being used to block schemes that are in fact compliant with planning policy. Epping Forest’s leader acknowledged his council’s overturn rate had ‘marginally’ breached the government’s target.
On speed, the criteria assess whether councils are determining major applications within the statutory timeframes. Persistent failure to meet decision deadlines is treated as evidence of inadequate performance.
Torbay: a separate but related intervention
Separately from the nine designations, Pennycook wrote to Torbay Council on 11 June 2026 under a different legal power, Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, to intervene in the council’s emerging Local Plan.
Torbay’s situation is distinct. The issue is not the speed or quality of its planning decisions but the adequacy of its plan-making. The council’s draft Local Plan for 2025–2045, published for Regulation 18 consultation in November 2025, set a housing requirement meeting just 42% of the area’s Local Housing Need — leaving a shortfall of 10,980 homes over the plan period.
Pennycook’s letter identifies several specific concerns. The council has not published an up-to-date Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, which is required to justify housing requirement decisions. Despite an Advisory Visit from the Planning Inspectorate in February 2026, the council has failed to respond to enquiries from MHCLG officials about when this document will be released. Torbay’s current adopted Local Plan dates from 2015, meaning its policies are likely to be out of date. And the council’s Housing Delivery Test score of 66% places it in the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ category, making it more vulnerable to speculative applications in the absence of an up-to-date plan.
The minister has directed Torbay to submit all relevant evidence base documents, including an updated HELAA, site assessments from the 2025 Call for Sites, and housing-related topic papers, within three weeks of 11 June 2026. Torbay has until 24 June 2026 to submit any exceptional circumstances it believes argue against intervention, though the minister makes clear this does not alter or remove the direction. If the council does not comply, Pennycook has signalled he will not hesitate to use further powers under Sections 21 and 27 of the 2004 Act, which could include taking over the plan-making process directly.
The bigger picture: Labour’s housing agenda
Today’s announcements do not exist in isolation. They are part of a sustained and escalating pattern of central government intervention in local planning since Labour came to power in July 2024.
The government’s housing target, 1.5 million homes over the Parliament, requires planning authorities across England to significantly increase housing approval rates. Revised National Planning Policy Framework guidance has tightened mandatory housing requirements for local plans. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill currently before Parliament proposes to further constrain local authorities’ ability to refuse development on grounds that conflict with national targets.
The nine designations announced today represent the government’s clearest signal yet that it is willing to act where councils are seen as obstructing housing delivery. The use of Section 62A is not unprecedented, the mechanism has been used under previous governments but the designation of nine councils in a single day is unusual and reflects the political urgency of the housing agenda.
For local government, the message is stark. Councils that routinely refuse or delay major planning applications, even where those refusals are subsequently overturned on appeal, risk losing the ability to make those decisions at all. The designation regime creates a direct financial and political incentive for councils to approve more development: the alternative is losing oversight of the most significant schemes in their areas.
The local democracy question
Epping Forest’s leader called the designation an ‘attack on local democracy’. That framing will resonate with many councillors and residents who feel that planning decisions should be made by people who know and live in the area, not by a national inspectorate.
The counter-argument from government is equally straightforward: a planning system that allows local authorities to consistently refuse development that meets all policy tests, and that loses the majority of those refusals at appeal, is a system that is being used to obstruct housebuilding rather than regulate it. From the government’s perspective, designation is not an attack on democracy but a correction of a democratic process that has been captured by local opposition to development.
The tension between these positions is unlikely to be resolved by this announcement. What it does do is shift the balance of power in planning decisions, at least temporarily, toward the centre. The nine designated councils will need to demonstrate sustained improvement in their performance metrics before they can apply for de-designation.
How do councils get out of designation?
The designation notices state that the designations ‘shall remain in force until revoked’. There is no automatic review date. Under the de-designation criteria set out in Section 62B of the TCPA 1990, a council can apply to be removed from designation once it has demonstrated it is adequately performing.
In practice, this means demonstrating improved performance against the speed and quality criteria, faster decisions on major applications, and a lower rate of refusals being overturned at appeal. Given the data periods used (two years of application data, followed by appeals outcomes), de-designation is likely to take at minimum 12 to 24 months even for councils that change their approach immediately.
For the nine councils designated today, Thursday 15 June 2026 marks the start of what is likely to be a significant period of scrutiny, process review, and political pressure. The decisions made in their planning committees over the coming months will determine whether they regain control of their most significant planning applications.
Sources
- MHCLG Designation Notices (15 June 2026): Dacorum, Hertsmere, Wychavon, Rossendale, Malvern Hills, South Tyneside, Epping Forest, Cherwell, Staffordshire Moorlands
- Torbay Council Local Plan Intervention Letter, Matthew Pennycook MP, 11 June 2026
- Local Government Lawyer: ‘Government revokes planning powers for nine councils in respect of major developments’, 15 June 2026
- Town and Country Planning Act 1990, Sections 62A and 62B
- Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, Sections 21 and 27
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
