A Nottinghamshire councillor has called a part of the government’s plans that could see housing developments rushed through the planning process without scrutiny a ‘disgrace’.
Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill was introduced in early 2025. It aims to speed up the planning process through local authorities.
It aims to accelerate the government’s target of building 1.5 million homes over the next five years.
In May, a consultation started across councils, linked to the government’s bill, asking authorities for feedback on a new ‘national scheme of delegation’ for planning applications, having a maximum of 11 planning committee members, and implementing mandatory training for committee members.
Currently, councils run their own rules between officers and planning committees deciding on planning applications, but the government’s hints at a reformed ‘national delegation scheme’ would see planning applications split into two types – tier A or tier B.
Tier A applications—more minor developments—would be automatically decided by council officers, whereas tier B applications—more complex applications—would be delegated to officers unless the Chief Planning Officer at a council and the planning committee’s chair agree to refer the application to the full committee.
However, the government could also propose classifying medium-sized housing schemes, between 10 and 49 homes, as tier A applications, meaning these could be approved without any councillor or resident scrutiny.
This raises questions, particularly for rural areas and green belt land, where even less significantly sized housing schemes can negatively impact the area.
Stoke Bardolph, in Gedling Borough, and the greenbelt land near it is one of these areas.
Back in 2022, a successful petition backed by more than 1,000 people and support from Conservative Trent Valley councillors, Sam Smith and Mike Adams, saw green belt land removed from Gedling Borough Council’s local plan.
It offered development protection to the fields surrounding a substation, located off the A612 Colwick Loop Road and situated at the back of Persimmon Homes Bardolph View development – but now the space is back in the spotlight under the council’s draft new local development plan.
Public consultation on the draft plan’s identified green spaces started on 21 July. Conservative borough councillors launched the ‘Save Gedling’s Green Spaces from Labour’s Development’—including this land—on 8 July 2025, and it has already achieved over 2,200 signatures.
Cllr Sam Smith called the tiering of planning applications a “disgrace to residents” and said it restricts the “democratic representation” of them.
He said: “All those sites [in the borough council’s draft local plan], they’re proposed to go through the local plan. If a planning application is now submitted, the public won’t [always] get a say and they’ll just [be approved].”
Fellow Trent Valley borough councillor, Mike Adams (Con) said: “It’s giving the [council] officer the power, that’s the problem I have with that.
“Officers aren’t elected. They might live in Bestwood – what are they going to know about Burton Joyce and Stoke Bardolph?”
“I will fight tooth and nail to prevent that… I know once we’ve lost that, that cute little thing about [villages like Stoke Bardolph], it disappears forever and never comes back.”
Cllr Adams also spoke of the flooding concerns for green belt land, like the space near Stoke Bardolph, calling it a “natural sink” for water, where any water rushed through developments on such land would stop water from having adequate natural drainage.
He added that the proposed tiering plans would “concrete over people’s ability to object” to applications.
Cllr Smith is also a Nottinghamshire County Councillor representing Newark East, where he raised his concerns at the county level.
On Tuesday (22 July), in the County Council’s Planning and Rights of Way Committee, he spoke of his “grave concern” for the government’s proposed planning policy changes.
He proposed an amendment on the county council’s original planned response to the government’s consultation that said the authority did not think a mechanism needed to be in place to bring tier A applications to planning committees in exceptional circumstances.
For the County Council’s planning responsibility – which would fall heavily on tier B applications – he said: “[This means] mineral plans going through that we didn’t consider at this committee or schools being built without parking drop-off bays and yellow lines on roads – that is what will happen day in, day out if this goes through.”
His amendment, to give tier A’s an option to go through planning committees, was accepted unanimously by the committee.
He added: “Thanks to my amendment [at the county level], the county council has now publicly said to the government we don’t agree all applications on the sites proposed in [district and boroughs’] local plans should not go through without going to the planning committee.”
Newark and Sherwood District Council responded that it thinks there should be “scope” for some tier A applications to be scrutinised by committees, adding: “In rural areas like ours, even small-scale housing developments can have a significant impact.”
A Gedling Borough Council spokesperson said the council’s position, in its own response to the government’s consultation, is that tier A applications should have an option to go through planning committees to “ensure transparency and public confidence” with complex issues such as heritage, green belt and landscape impacts.
