Bedford Borough councillors have backed a cross-party amendment to the council constitution to protect local people’s right to voice concerns over controversial development plans.
The decision follows growing concern over compulsory national planning rules due to take effect on 31 October 2026, which remove ward councillors’ power to call in disputed applications for public debate.
Planning powers
Under existing arrangements, ward councillors can request that disputed development proposals be referred directly to the Planning Committee for public decision.
Under the government’s new delegation framework, decision powers will default to council officers, limiting public committee debates to specific statutory criteria agreed between planning heads and the committee chair.
The council’s General Purposes Committee will now examine how local arrangements can give councillors the strongest lawful mechanism to bring community objections before the committee.
Devolution concerns
Highlighting concerns over national centralisation, Cllr Graeme Coombes (Conservative/Wilshamstead) said: “Labour’s hypocrisy on devolution is staggering.
“The prime minister talks endlessly about devolution and handing power to local communities, but these planning changes do the exact opposite.
“The government’s new rules take power away from locally elected councillors and replace it with a centrally imposed system that shuts people out of decisions affecting where they live.
“It is shocking that this comes from the prime minister of all people, who, as a former local government leader himself, should know how important local democracy is. As a politician who claims to value local government, it is astonishing how little trust he is prepared to place in it.
“The motion approved by councillors last night does not overturn the national rules, but it makes sure Bedford Borough explores every lawful way to protect local people’s voices in the planning process.”
Local plan
Opposing voices pointed to local factors compounding the situation, with Liberal Democrat councillors noting that delays in updating the local plan had already exposed Bedford to higher housing pressures.
At the meeting, and ahead of the vote, Cllr Jon Abbott (Liberal Democrats/Clapham and Oakley) said: “The previous Liberal Democrat-led administration prepared Local Plan 2040 and submitted it for examination in January 2023.
“The inspector subsequently raised concerns, particularly around housing delivery and strategic infrastructure, and paused the examination to allow those issues to be addressed.
“When the Conservatives took control of this council, they inherited a plan that needed some work to address the inspector’s concerns.
“Our view is that the right response was to do that work and do everything possible to get an updated Local Plan in place.
“Instead, the plan was allowed to drift. And that mattered because everyone knew the clock was ticking.
“The existing Local Plan 2030 had been adopted on 15 January 2020, meaning that from 16 January 2025, our housing requirement would no longer be based on that five-year-old plan and would instead move to the government’s standard method.
“And this isn’t an abstract technicality. When that five-year point was reached, Bedford’s assessed annual housing requirement went from 970 homes to 1,202 homes a year.
“That has left Bedford far more exposed to speculative development at exactly the wrong time.
“And now we have the second part of this perfect storm.
“The Labour government has changed the NPPF, increasing the pressure for housing delivery, and is now imposing a national scheme of delegation which takes more planning decisions away from elected councillors.
“Under the scheme before us tonight, many applications must be determined by officers. Even for Schedule 2 applications, an application can only come before Planning Committee where the statutory criteria are met, and both the head of planning and the chair of Planning Committee agree that it should be referred.
“So just when Bedford most needs a strong, up-to-date Local Plan to help defend our communities from inappropriate speculative development, councillors are also losing one of the mechanisms we have traditionally had to ensure controversial applications are debated in public.
“Local people will understandably ask: if their parish council objects, if local neighbours object and if their ward councillor believes an application should be heard by Planning Committee, why shouldn’t their elected representatives be able to hear it?
“We cannot undo the national regulations tonight. But we must make absolutely certain that the discretion we still have for Schedule 2 applications is used to protect local democratic involvement.
“Because Bedford’s communities should not pay the price for Conservative inaction locally and Labour’s centralisation of planning nationally.”
Policy response
Responding after the meeting, a spokesperson for Bedford Borough Labour Group said: “We feel the amendment was performative and political.
“We recognise that some local people may be concerned that planning committees will consider fewer applications.
“However, the reforms do not remove our influence as elected representatives. They change where and how we can exercise that influence.
“Applications that are more complex or have a bigger impact on the community can still be decided by a planning committee. Clear rules ensure these types of applications can still be considered by councillors.
“Councillors can still represent local people, raise planning objections and shape the Local Plan and planning policy.
“Councillors can still make representations on applications, identify relevant planning impacts and ask officers to investigate issues such as highway safety, drainage, design, heritage and the adequacy of infrastructure.”
Green opposition
Green councillors also opposed the Conservative amendment, criticising the loss of local democratic control and describing the additional constitutional review as unnecessary.
Following the meeting, Cllr Ben Foley (Green/Greyfriars) said: “The Green group, like other parties, rejects the government’s further removal of democratic involvement in planning decisions.
“We are concerned that it will result in even more bad building projects being forced on the borough without enough chance for local people to influence them.
“We expressed bitter regret that the council was being forced to change its constitution, but recognised that it was being forced by government.
“We pointed out that the Conservative amendment really just asked the General Purposes Committee to do something it is doing already.
“We therefore voted against their amendment as an utterly pointless waste of time, which will just cause us to have an extra meeting of full council to change the council constitution in exactly the same way as it would if there had been no amendment at the council meeting.”
