Planning law shift: mayors to call in 150+ home schemes

For planning and public-law practitioners, the most consequential sentence in Andy Burnham's proposal is the constraint buried inside it: mayoral decisions 'must be in line with planning rules, local plans set out for areas and the national policy.' That clause is the justiciability question at the heart of the reform — the standard against which any mayoral call-in will be tested in a statutory challenge or judicial review — and it arrives alongside thresholds (150 homes, 15,000 sqm, 30 metres) that will define the new scope of devolved planning jurisdiction.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, is set to unveil proposals in the week beginning 24 August 2026 that would hand England's devolved mayors the power to seize control of major local planning decisions and greenlight large-scale developments, a shift that would substantially redraw the boundary between combined-authority mayors and the local planning authorities that currently exercise development-control functions. Under the plans, mayors would be able to 'call in' decisions — a term that deliberately echoes the Secretary of State's long-standing call-in power under section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 — and direct councils to take schemes forward or refuse them, as well as grant upfront permission so developers can begin work without first applying through the ordinary route.

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The Government is, by its own admission, just over a quarter of the way toward its target of 1.5 million new homes in England within five years, a trajectory that falls well behind the roughly 300,000 homes per year the target implies.

The scope of the new mayoral jurisdiction is defined by three objective thresholds: residential developments of more than 150 homes, commercial schemes exceeding 15,000 square metres, or any building standing 30 metres or taller, roughly equivalent to ten storeys. Ten of England's 14 devolved mayors have already signalled support, and the reform would bring them into line with the Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, who was granted equivalent powers earlier in 2026 as an emergency measure to unblock dozens of stalled sites and accelerate the delivery of affordable housing in the capital.

The legal architecture of the proposal matters as much as its policy ambition. Burnham has been careful to state that mayoral decisions 'must be in line with planning rules, local plans set out for areas and the national policy.' That formulation is not cosmetic: it is the principal guardrail against unfettered executive discretion and, in practice, the standard against which any mayoral call-in would be tested in the High Court by way of a statutory challenge or judicial review. Planning lawyers will scrutinise whether the power is conferred by primary legislation or by secondary instrument, what 'in line with' means as a matter of statutory interpretation, and whether a mayoral refusal or approval could be quashed for failing to give adequate reasons or for departing from an adopted local plan. The precedent of London's emergency powers earlier in 2026 will be instructive, but the extension to ten combined authorities introduces a far wider and more variegated set of local-plan regimes.

The proposal also carries two fiscal components with legal and commercial consequences. Mayors would gain a materially greater say in how national housing funding from Homes England is spent in their areas — a reallocation of funding control that shifts accountability from central department to devolved executive — and would be empowered to charge a levy on development to fund major infrastructure. That levy mechanism echoes the Community Infrastructure Levy and the Mayor of London's existing Mayoral CIL, and its extension to combined authorities raises the prospect of a patchwork of devolved development levies with differing rates, exemptions and indexing arrangements across England, a complexity that developers, planning consultants and conveyancers will need to price into land acquisitions and viability assessments.

The context is a housing-delivery shortfall. The Government is, by its own admission, just over a quarter of the way toward its target of 1.5 million new homes in England within five years, a trajectory that falls well behind the roughly 300,000 homes per year the target implies. The devolution of call-in powers is therefore a delivery mechanism as much as a constitutional reform: it is designed to bypass localised resistance. Burnham himself conceded the argument that devolving such powers could disempower councillors, MPs and constituents, while insisting 'it's not all about Nimbyism' and that challenge 'cuts both ways,' implying mayors could equally use the power to refuse schemes.