Chris Worrall: Our consultative planning system delivers anything but proper democratic consent | Conservative Home

Chris Worrall was founder of LabourYIMBY and been a long-standing housing advocate and campaigner. He now supports the Conservatives, and is Industry Fellow at Onward.

The New Year is meant to be a moment of resolve. A time to look squarely at what is not working and decide, deliberately, to change course. Yet as Westminster enters the year ahead, one truth remains studiously avoided. England’s planning system is being rebuilt in a way that silences communities, evades demographic reality, and mistakes administrative speed for democratic legitimacy.

On 16 December, in the Commons debate on planning reform, Gareth Bacon put the matter plainly:

“Finally, the views of local people are not a burden in assessing planning applications; they are among the most important factors… It is increasingly clear that the planning system that this Government are not just envisaging and planning for, but actively creating, is one in which such local concerns are much harder to raise. His Majesty’s Opposition do not believe that local people and local democracy should suffer for that.”

He was right. And it matters that the point went unanswered.

Despite responding at length on delivery, speed and targets, Matthew Pennycook did not directly rebut or answer this core charge in his reply: that Labour’s reforms actively make local voices harder to raise. The silence was telling. When a government cannot defend the democratic foundations of its reforms, it reaches for process.

This is not accidental. Labour’s approach to planning is being shaped less by voters and more by what might politely be called the civil service and consultant industrial complex: long timelines, process-heavy reform, inspector discretion, and a growing reliance on appeal and call-in rather than consent. The proposed 30-month timetable for new local plans is the clearest example. Two and a half years is not “urgent reform” in a housing crisis; it is bureaucratic drift dressed up as ambition.

At the heart of the problem sits a neglected instrument.  Statements of Community Involvement (SCI) exist, but in practice they are weak procedural documents focused on how councils consult, not who is heard or whether engagement reflects the wider community. Labour’s NPPF changes talk warmly about engagement, but do nothing to correct the most fundamental flaw in the current system, namely that it relies on voluntary, self-selected participation and treats it as democratic voice.

The evidence shows this is indefensible. In Neighbourhood Defenders, Katherine Levine Einstein and her co-authors demonstrate that voluntary planning consultations and hearings are systematically unrepresentative. Participants are disproportionately older, wealthier, whiter, more likely to be homeowners, and far more hostile to new housing than the communities they claim to represent. These processes do not aggregate public opinion. They amplify the preferences of a narrow and motivated minority.

This is not a marginal finding. It goes to the heart of why England’s planning system so often fails. A system that treats self-selected participation as a proxy for community consent is not defending local democracy. It is distorting it.

This is where the centre right should draw a clear line Properly designed representative engagement, used in planning systems overseas, shows how councils can hear the whole community rather than only the loudest voices. Representative surveys correct self-selection bias by design. They distinguish between how many people hold a view and how strongly a few feel it. They test trade-offs rather than slogans. They surface the conditions under which communities will accept growth. Above all, they provide a democratic foundation for decision making that voluntary consultation cannot.

The Representative Planning Group, a cross-party campaign led by Simon Dudley and Jack Rankin on the right, has argued consistently that representative evidence should replace traditional consultation as the primary decision shaping input, with voluntary consultation retained for local knowledge, detail and scrutiny. Rather than as a stand-in for public opinion.

A modest change to the NPPF consultation would be enough. Statements of Community Involvement should be required to mandate representative engagement at key plan stages. Councils should publish how that evidence was gathered and how it informed choices. Inspectors should be able to test, through the soundness tests, whether plans are justified and effective because they reflect the views of the wider community rather than the objections of the most organised.

This would not hand communities a veto. Councillors would still decide. Inspectors would still judge. But it would end the quiet fiction that planning decisions are democratically grounded simply because a consultation was held.

Yet even a re democratised planning system will fail if it continues to avoid the most uncomfortable truth in the housing debate. Housing demand does not rise by magic. Population change matters, and immigration is a decisive component of that change.

Here Labour’s silence becomes a structural weakness. Housing targets rise, communities rebel, and ministers talk of mysterious pressures as if demand were beyond political control. The evidence says otherwise, and Conservatives should not flinch from stating it.

The Onward Corner Denmark’s Dagger analysis makes the case directly. It argues that a Denmark style zero net migration framework materially eases housing pressure in a supply constrained system like England’s. That conclusion sits alongside Onward’s Full House research, which showed that net migration combined with inelastic housing supply has placed substantial upward pressure on rents and prices, particularly in London and the South East. The message from both is simple. When population growth runs ahead of housing delivery, scarcity deepens and trust collapses.

Other countries do not indulge this denial. Canada translates immigration targets into housing and infrastructure plans. Australia builds net overseas migration into housing need calculations. Germany and the Netherlands incorporate migration into demographic scenarios that shape spatial strategy. England alone insists on planning for the population it wishes it had.

This is the democratic failure at the heart of Labour’s approach. Communities are asked to accept growth without being told honestly why the numbers keep rising or whether those drivers are within political control. The result is planning by appeal, inspector discretion, and democratic afterthought.

For the centre right, the New Year should mark a turning point. A centre right conservatism worthy of the name faces reality, trusts citizens enough to hear them properly, and builds legitimacy before speed rather than after revolt. Mandating representative engagement through SCI reform would restore democratic consent. Embracing a Denmark style zero net migration framework would restore honesty about demand. Shortening plan making timetables would restore urgency without authoritarianism.

Labour has chosen a different path. It rides roughshod over communities while insisting it acts in their interests. That is not progressive. It is technocratic.

As the year begins, the centre right should say so clearly and without apology. This is how they win back reform minded voters who want homes and fairness, and those who value local democracy and feel it has been quietly sidelined.

The New Year is about renewal. A planning system that no longer listens will never deliver at scale. The centre right should be the party that restores both houses and trust by telling the truth about who we hear, how we plan, and why the numbers keep rising.

In doing so, they can prove that the centre right, properly understood, is not the enemy of building, but the guardian of consent.