From 31 October, Wandsworth’s ward councillors lose the right to call in planning applications, and officers will decide even more of them. Members of the Planning Forum heard this on 30 September, in a meeting that still publishes no agenda and no minutes, despite the Conservative administration’s pledges of transparency.

The bi-annual Planning Forum on Wednesday 30 September was chaired by Cllr Ravi Govindia, former leader of the Council from 2011 to 2022, and now chair of the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) under the new Conservative administration.

In an unprecendented occasion, the new Council Leader, Robert Morritt, was also present at the start. As Societies and a few resident groups were present, he wanted to provide information about the joint open letter launched by four London borough (Wandsworth, Richmond-upon-Thames, Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea) about the cuts to their central government grants caused by a restructured funding formula. Under the new formula, Wandsworth’s core government funding is set to fall by £84 million (a 40% cut) by 2029 according to the Council’s website. Wandsworth claim that they pay 67% more in combined taxes (income tax, Stamp Duty and business rates) to the governement than Lambeth and will receive less from White Hall. Without a rethink, Wandsworth warned it may have to steeply increase its historically low council tax by up to £958 for a Band D property.

• Read our interview: Peter Graham on the election results, the financial crisis and the mitigation plans
• And our article on the Financial issue: A financial timebomb: what Wandsworth isn’t saying about council tax

Planning reforms: Democracy stripped away

Officers explained that a national reform of planning decisions in England is due to take effect on 31 October 2026, removing even more decisions from the hands of councillors. The change was created by the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and will be put into practical effect through regulations. It was announced in the King’s Speech as a way to modernise how planning operates. The substance is now largely settled. Parliamentary scrutiny of the regulations could still alter some details, but the deadline is such that all councils are expected to comply with the new national framework by the end of the month.

The reform sets a national scheme for deciding which applications go to planning officers and which may be considered by councillors:

• Schedule 1: specified applications must be decided by officers, and there is no route to committee under the scheme.
• Schedule 2: applications are presumed to be decided by officers. This schedule includes all major applications, listed building and advertisement consents, tree preservation order works and related amendments, discharges of conditions and planning obligations. They can go to committee only after a ‘gateway test’, applied jointly by a nominated member and a nominated officer.

The test is meant to consider whether an application is of economic, social or environmental significance to the local area, or raises a significant planning matter in light of the development plan and other relevant considerations. However, it is currently open to interpretation, as there is no clear definition and it seems to be up to officers to decide whether elected councillors can have their say.

In practice, this does not look like a major change for Wandsworth, as 98% of all applications are already decided by officers alone. However, until recently, an application could be referred to the PAC when objections reached a certain level (usually three to five). That will not be the case under the new legislation, as all objections will be considered by officers alone, who will be able to dismiss them at will. In effect, the councillor ‘call-in’ right is removed, as the national scheme rules out committee consideration by default.

The guidance on ‘significant’ schemes is vague and subject to interpretation. During the meeting, planning members asked whether objectors have any recourse if officers deem their objections insufficient on a Schedule 1 application. Officers answered ‘no’. Officers also confirmed that if the nominated officer and the nominated councillor disagree, the decision will remain with officers.

“There is no definition of what goes into Schedule 1 or Schedule 2. Before, if you had a number of objections, officers had to submit the planning proposal before the PAC, with local councillors able to speak. With the reform, the democratic nature of planning is being stripped away,” said Philip Whyte, vice-chair of the Wandsworth Society. Another member called this “monstrous“, imagining a glass pod added to an Edwardian terrace in West Putney, and mentioned recent backland schemes of four or five units overlooked by many neighbours. The Battersea Society commented that “the new system is an attack on democracy“.

It couldn’t further from the claim from Keir Starmer’s government last May that their measure “would modernise the way planning committees operate to best deliver for communities and support much needed development,” and that it would “reinforced the importance of planning committees as a fundamental part of local democratic accountability“.

Michael Jubb (Chair of the London Forum and a Battersea Society member) pointed out that applications in conservation areas, or in the setting of a listed building, would not even go through the gateway test if they fall under Schedule 1. He added that most London boroughs do not let societies meet case officers about individual applications, and attendees said that in Wandsworth their letters to officers often go unanswered. He said the London Forum is about to circulate guidance to councils on access to information about applications.

Officers said the gateway adds work for both councillors and officers, and that delegated reports will have to explain more robustly why objections do not justify refusal. Staffing will not change immediately but will be reviewed after about six months. The Council will publish an annual report on applications put through the gateway test and the outcomes. On weekly lists, officers said they will not flag whether applications are Schedule 1 or Schedule 2, because validation officers are not planners. However, a Schedule 2 application drawing an objection from a society will still be highlighted in the gateway review.

Cllr Govindia said the change had been done ‘unto us’ without the Council’s consent. He promised that ward councillors will remain accessible ‘champions’ and a ‘safety valve’, and said the administration would be willing to revisit its processes, or lobby the Government, if residents end up unhappy. Council Leader Robert Morritt commented that it was ‘another anti-London policy, and a solution from the government to address a problem that does not exist currently in London’, pointing to the vast majority of applications already being decided by officers under delegated powers.

Members asked the Council for a literal interpretation of the gateway test but received no commitment.

Wandsworth faces tougher housing targets under new planning rules

Wandsworth Council officers have raised concerns about the draft London Plan’s proposed 20% increase in the borough’s housing target, warning that it could undermine the Council’s position under new national planning rules.

The draft London Plan proposes 23,430 homes in Wandsworth over ten years, equivalent to 2,343 a year and a 20% increase on the current target. For comparison, the target was about 18,000 over ten years in 2016 and was raised to 19,500 in 2019. The latest increase reflects the strong push from central government to raise construction. In September 2024, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner wanted 81,000 new homes a year for London. That was more than double the then target of 37,000 and 60% above the 53,000 projected in the London Plan. It also went against the evidence, as only 35,000 homes were completed that year.

Unsurprisingly, only a handful of London boroughs meet their targets. Wandsworth is one of only five to pass the housing delivery test, which officers called deeply flawed because it measures third-party build-out rather than permissions granted. The borough only just meets the requirement to demonstrate a five-year supply of housing land against its existing target. That supply includes major developments in Nine Elms, such as New Covent Garden Market and the remaining phases of Battersea Power Station.

• Read our previous article: Is Wandsworth aiming for a lower housing target than before?

The borough was helped by earlier years in which delivery strongly exceeded the housing targets, according to the Authority Monitoring Report (Housing Committee report September 2023).

Although officers support increasing delivery, they doubt the new target is realistic. The potential in Nine Elms is drying up rapidly, as most of the major proposals in the area have now been granted and partly built.

The new national rules introduce a presumption in favour of development within settlements, meaning councils will need stronger grounds to refuse applications. Policies in existing local plans that conflict materially with national policy will carry limited weight.

Officers also intend to challenge the draft London Plan’s assumptions about industrial land, which it says could provide about 3,500 homes by 2037. They argued that these sites are heavily occupied and economically important, and that the proposed capacity and delivery rates lack sufficient evidence.

Another change that could directly affect development across the borough is to raise the threshold for tall buildings from Wandsworth’s current 21 metres (seven storeys) to at least 30 metres (ten storeys), while encouraging higher densities.

Most importantly for Clapham Junction, the draft London Plan proposes removing the area’s Opportunity Area status. This could make tall buildings harder to build there, an effect many local residents would welcome based on previous community campaigns, as such buildings could change the character of the area drastically. However, the Council takes a different view, and officers explained that they intend to object to the change.

The draft also proposes affordable housing requirements of 35% on private land and 40% on public land for schemes of more than 35 homes, with a 60/40 split favouring social rent. Officers will seek greater flexibility for boroughs to set their own targets. Wandsworth’s own policy, adopted in March 2026, already increased the proportion of social rent in its affordable housing mix from 50% to 70%.

• Read: Challenges ahead of Wandsworth’s Local Plan amendments

Last but not least, officers explained that there has been no progress on a new Local Plan, and the 2023 plan remains in force. They are scoping a programme under the new regulations, with a likely start in 2027 and adoption not before 2028. The system runs on a 30-month timetable with three Planning Inspectorate gateways and three consultation stages. Unlike the old process, no full draft plan appears until the final consultation. The Council intends to follow the timetable for the new London Plan, which could be approved in late spring or early summer 2028. Meanwhile, officers are assessing the implications of the revised national planning rules, including changes to garden development, heritage protections and planning application requirements.

“This Is Not a Political Meeting“: Govindia Shuts the Door on Transparency

Once again, the Clapham Junction Action Group (CJAG) explained that the Forum was listed on the Council website, with agendas and minutes, until around the Covid period. They renewed their call for basic measures to be restored: a webpage, public agendas and published minutes, as is standard for other advisory bodies. Failing that, they asked for at least the agenda to be published so that the meeting is not seen as secret.

In a previous article, we showed evidence uncovered by Clapham Junction Insider shows that this balance was once achieved in practice. Until at least 2012, the council hosted a dedicated Planning Forum webpage (still available on web archive), with meeting dates and downloadable minutes dating back to 2007. Although the page was not always updated on time, at least it existed. That page — and all references to the forum — have since been deleted.

When it was discussed in April 2025, the Labour Chair, Tony Belton, who had complained after the 2022 elections that he was not aware of the Forum’s procedures, made no commitment to transparency. In January 2026, with his colleague Cllr Dikerdem standing in for him, a vague promise was made of “looking into the matter” and exploring possible options. Nothing came of it, and the local elections followed.

During a discussion with CJI last month, we asked Peter Graham, Wandsworth’s deputy leader, whether, given their efforts to make the Council more open, he would consider making the Forum more transparent and perhaps even allowing the opposition planning spokesperson, or other councillors, to attend. While he was careful not to tread on the toes of the chair of the Planning Applications Committee, he did say that “given we’re doing reforms on the way the council operates, I’m sure they’ll be very open to discussions of that kind.”

At the September meeting, however, Cllr Govindia sharply dismissed the idea. “This is not a political meeting!” he snapped. Although he has been a councillor for more than 20 years and was leader for eleven, he claimed he did not recall the Forum being on the Council’s calendar or among its documentation.

While some members argued that there is no procedural barrier to returning to the Forum’s earlier level of openness, most seemed very reluctant to increase transparency. Mr Jubb sympathised with transparency but feared that public minutes would restrict candid discussion. Another member said that opening the meeting widely had in the past allowed it to be taken over by single-issue lobbies, for example on tree protection. A third said that minutes are more filtered than full records, and favoured informality.

Cllr Govindia concluded that the mood of the meeting was to carry on as now, with no publication or advertising of any kind.

What is the Planning Forum and how does it work

Once every six months, representatives of community groups, forums, or societies from various areas of the Wandsworth Borough focused on urban planning meet at the Council to discuss planning issues with planning officers. The meeting is chaired by the Councillor who chairs the Planning Application Committee (PAC), currently Tony Belton, and not other councillor is invited on a regular basis.

The forum serves as a platform for officers to update attendees on planning matters specific to the Wandsworth borough without discussing individual cases (as they often remind the audience!). It is also (and this was implemented in January 2018 under Conservative Councillor Will Sweet after a strong request in July 2017) a forum for discussion allowing a large space for representatives of the community to bring forward specific topics. In other words, there is a shared agenda, with – it may vary depending on the agenda – one hour dedicated to officer updates and one hour for topics from the organisations.

Disclaimer: Cyril Richert was representing the Clapham Junction Action Group at the Council’s meeting