Last week, the Housing and Planning Minister briefed UKREiiF that the next London Plan will be "streamlined" and that boroughs will lose the ability to veto major developments. The official line is that local councils are the bottleneck. The real story is that Labour has decided the easiest way to hit its housing numbers is to remove the people who say no.
What Is Being Proposed
The current London Plan, agreed in 2021, is being replaced by a slimmer document. Boroughs will retain notional planning powers but will be required to accept developments that match the Mayor's strategic priorities. Refusal will be over-ridable. A new "call-in" mechanism is being baked in so that Whitehall, or the Greater London Authority, can take any major application out of the local authority's hands.
Combined with the revised National Planning Policy Framework, which has already raised mandatory housing targets and weakened protections for Green Belt land, the direction is unmistakable. Local democracy is being downgraded to local consultation. Consultation that the developer's lawyer is paid to ignore.
This Won't Stop at London
Nobody who watches Whitehall should believe this is a London-only project. The Office for Budget Responsibility has been asked to score the GDP impact of higher housebuilding nationally. The Treasury has signed off on the assumption that planning consents will accelerate by double digits. That arithmetic only works if the same model is rolled out to the metropolitan boroughs and then to the counties.
Lancashire is squarely in the firing line. I sit on the County Council. I watch what happens when Whitehall sets a number and the borough is told to deliver it. Green Belt fields outside Preston are already being consulted on for thousands of homes. Once the precedent is set in London, it will be in Lancashire by the end of the next financial year.
The Demand Side of the Equation
You cannot have an honest housing debate in this country without talking about demand. Net migration ran above 700,000 in 2023 and remains above sustainable levels. Britain is adding the population of a city the size of Sheffield every couple of years and then expressing surprise that the housing market cannot cope. Building more is part of the answer. Controlling the inflow is the other part — and Labour will not touch it.
So the strategy becomes: concrete over fields, override councils, and hope the voter does not notice the connection. They will notice.
Why Local Veto Power Matters
Councils block bad developments for a reason. Drainage. Schools. GP capacity. Roads. The cumulative impact of three developments in one parish that nobody planned for together. A national target does not see any of that. A councillor surveying a flood-prone field next to a single primary school does. Stripping local control is not a route to good housing. It is a route to bad housing built fast.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would keep the planning veto in local hands and require any over-ride to be voted on in Parliament, not signed off by a minister at lunchtime. We would publish a Net Migration Population Budget every year and tie housing targets to it honestly, so that the country knows how much building is needed because of natural growth and how much is being built to absorb migration.
We would prioritise brownfield development with a meaningful financial incentive for councils that hit brownfield targets. We would protect the Green Belt — actually protect it, not the watered-down "grey belt" version Labour invented. And we would require infrastructure delivery — schools, surgeries, drainage — to be funded before homes are occupied, not five years after.
Housing is a real problem. Removing local councils from the equation is not a solution. It is a power grab — and the residents of Preston East, like the residents of every borough Labour is about to bulldoze through, deserve better than concrete poured over their consent.