Shropshire Planning Committee Call-Ins End on 31 October

From Saturday 31 October, objecting to a planning application in Shropshire will no longer be enough to get it in front of a planning committee. The same goes for a call-in request from a ward councillor, a town council or a parish council.

Shropshire Council announced the change on 2 October. It is not the council’s choice. Every planning authority in England has to apply the same national rules from that date.

The rules cover any application still undecided on 31 October. That includes applications already submitted, and ones already called in before that date.

Who decides now

The rules are set out in the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026, made on 15 July. They split applications into two groups.

The first group must be decided by a council officer. No committee can hear them. They include:

• householder applications, such as extensions, loft conversions and garages
• small housing schemes of one to nine homes on a site under half a hectare
• minor commercial applications
• lawful development certificates
• prior approval applications, such as some barn conversions
• reserved matters on outline permissions of under 500 homes
• applications to discharge conditions on an existing permission

The second group can go to a committee, but only through a “gateway”. This covers larger housing and commercial schemes, listed building consent, consent for work on protected trees, advertisement consent and retrospective applications.

For one of these to reach a committee, two people must agree to send it: a councillor and an officer, each nominated by the council. The regulations say they may refer it only if it raises:

• an economic, social or environmental issue of significance to the local area, or
• a significant planning matter, judged against the development plan and other material considerations

Anything they do not refer is decided by an officer. A committee hearing one of these applications can have no more than 13 members.

The council’s announcement does not say who will hold the two nominated roles in Shropshire.

What stays the same

You can still support, object to or comment on any application. The council says comments on material planning matters will still be weighed, and lists them:

• highway safety
• flooding
• heritage
• ecology
• landscape
• residential amenity
• design
• conflict with planning policy

What changes is the route. The council’s own words: “the number of objections, local controversy or a request from a ward councillor, town council or parish council will no longer automatically determine whether an application is referred to a planning committee.”

David Walker, the Cabinet member for planning, said the biggest change is that “a local objection or call-in request will no longer create an automatic route to a planning committee.”

He also argued the effect in Shropshire should be smaller than in many other places. The council already runs an “agenda-setting” process that filters which applications go to its planning committees. That will become the formal gateway. The council expects the number of applications its committees decide to stay “relatively consistent”. Fewer will reach the agenda-setting stage, it says, because the automatic routes are gone.

What it means for you

• Objecting to a neighbour’s extension: that application will be decided by an officer from 31 October, whatever the number of objections. Make your comment count by naming the planning harm, such as overlooking, loss of light or highway safety.
• Objecting to a larger scheme: a committee hearing is no longer guaranteed by a parish objection or a councillor’s request. The argument that gets it there is that the scheme raises an issue of significance to the area.
• Town and parish councils: your objection still goes on the file and still has to be considered. It no longer forces a committee.
• Already called in? If your application is undecided on 31 October, the new rules apply to it.

Shropshire has three area planning committees, Northern, Central and Southern. The Northern committee next meets on 20 October and the Southern on 27 October, both before the change. Our planning news page tracks the bigger applications as they come in.

The other change: a new Local Plan by March 2029

The same week, the council started the clock on its next Local Plan, the document that decides where new homes and businesses go.

It passed “Gateway 1” on 30 September, which starts a 30-month process under the government’s new plan-making rules. The council’s Gateway 1 page says government policy expects every council to adopt its next plan within 30 months of starting. Its summer scoping consultation drew more than 800 responses, which it says are still being assessed.

The plan Shropshire uses now is old. Its two parts, the Core Strategy and the SAMDev plan, were adopted in February 2011 and December 2015, and both cover 2006 to 2026. The new plan runs to 2046.

The council’s published plan-making timetable gives the dates when residents can next have a say:

The council says these dates may move in response to feedback, new evidence or changes in national policy. Its interim service director for place shaping, in consultation with the Cabinet member for planning, has the authority to update the timetable.

The two consultations are where residents can argue about which sites should be allocated for new homes, before any planning application is made for them.