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Planning should stay local, and Wychavon Town proves exactly why this fight matters

The latest news from Wychavon says everything about the broken planning system we are now fighting.

Wychavon Council has been placed under a government planning sanction under Section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act. In plain English, this means that for certain major developments, developers can now bypass the council and go straight to the Planning Inspectorate.

Why? Because over a two year period, 10.7 percent of major planning applications refused by the council were later allowed on appeal. The government threshold is 10 percent.

So there it is. If a council refuses too many major schemes and too many are later allowed by inspectors, the government can step in and take power away. That is not local democracy. That is a warning shot to every council in the country. Fall in line, or have your decisions taken off you.

Wychavon is understandably furious. Councillors are now saying planning should stay local, that communities such as Drakes Broughton and Badsey have already endured development that changed their character, and that decisions should not be handed to inspectors with no real knowledge of Wychavon or the people who live here and who are in reality government puppets

Good. They are right.

But here is the question we must ask.

Where was this same fire when Wychavon Town was being lined up?

Where was this anger when open countryside around Worcestershire Parkway was being treated as the answer to housing pressure?

Where was this defence of local democracy when residents were being asked to comment on glossy frameworks, loaded questionnaires and masterplans that already assumed a new town would happen?

Because this latest sanction proves exactly what we have been saying. The system is not built to listen. It is built to deliver development. If local people object, they are told the framework says otherwise. If councillors refuse, developers appeal. If too many appeals are allowed, the government threatens to remove local decision making altogether.

That is the ducking stool principle of planning as I've previously mentioned.

If no one objects, the land is earmarked for destruction and the countryside goes under concrete.

If people do object, the framework is waved around, the appeal system is used, inspectors step in and the result is often the same.

Either way, local people lose.

This is also why the South Worcestershire Development Plan now feels so appalling to many residents.

The SWDP has become an unholy matrimony of council structures, national housing targets, planning departments, government pressure and developer opportunity. What has emerged is not a plan shaped by genuine community consent. It feels like a sacrificial lamb development, with our countryside offered up to feed a machine that no longer appears capable of saying no.

Wychavon Town is unwanted by many of the communities closest to it. It is not needed in the form being proposed. It does not serve the rural communities being asked to carry the burden. It is a developer dream, wrapped in policy language and sold back to residents as progress.

This is not planning by consent. This is government going rogue.

The current national planning direction, including mandatory housing targets and the drive to deliver more homes, is being imposed from the top down. That policy direction has placed enormous pressure on local authorities to find land, release sites and deliver numbers.

But numbers are not communities.

Targets are not consent.

A spreadsheet in Whitehall is not the same as the lived reality of people in Pirton, Stoulton, Wadborough, Drakes Broughton, Pershore, Whittington, Norton, Pinvin, White Ladies Aston, Littleworth and the wider rural landscape that will be permanently changed.

A plan can be dressed up with glossy websites, consultation boards, sustainability language, artist impressions and carefully chosen words, but that does not change what it is. You can put a ribbon round a rotten policy, but it is still rotten underneath.

This is also why so many people now feel detached from politics. You can change the elected faces, but the machine still rolls on unchanged. The language changes. The logos change. The ministers change. Yet the same system keeps pushing the same outcomes, more housing targets, more pressure on countryside, more developer access, and less meaningful local control.

This is what happens when bad planning policy is allowed to grow unchecked.

You do not get to this point overnight. You get here because schemes like Wychavon Town are allowed to take root at the very core of the planning process. Instead of weeding them out early, when the damage can still be stopped, they are dressed up, renamed, consulted on, softened with glossy language, and then embedded into documents until everyone is told it is too late.

That is exactly why the SWDP matters.

Once you go along with a system that treats local consent as an obstacle, you cannot be surprised when that same system eventually takes control away from you as well.

That is why these things must be nipped in the bud.

We cannot be part of such abominations. We cannot politely accept a process that sacrifices open countryside, then act shocked when the same process strips power from local decision makers. This has to be challenged at the root.

It is also clear that local democracy itself is being steadily weakened.

The push towards larger unitary councils may be presented as efficiency, simplicity and better administration, but to many residents it feels like another step away from local voices. Bigger councils. More distant structures. Fewer points of contact. Less local identity. Less direct accountability.

Any attempt to delay or remove local elections should worry everyone. Whatever explanation is offered, the effect is simple. People are denied the chance to vote at the very moment local government is being reshaped around them.

This is why politics feels broken. You change the elected faces, but the machine still rolls on unchanged. The party colour changes. The slogan changes. The minister changes. Yet the same bureaucracy keeps pushing housing numbers, strategic allocations and developer led growth while communities are left trying to defend themselves after the event.

What may have started as a political chase for housing numbers has now become the hard, cold reality of developer led bureaucracy.

And look at the national machinery now sitting behind new towns and large scale development.

We are told these are expert panels. We are told this is strategic planning. We are told this is how growth will be delivered.

But who is really in the room?

The government’s own New Towns Taskforce membership lists the following people.

Sir Michael Lyons, Chair - In reality the non executive Chairman of the English Cities Fund, a joint venture involving Homes England, with large scale regeneration developments in London, Liverpool, Plymouth, Salford and Wakefield. He has also been on the boards of Redrow Homes and Sage Housing, and has acted as a strategic adviser to CBRE, a commercial real estate and investment firm.

Dame Kate Barker, Deputy Chair, in reality the former non executive director at Taylor Wimpey plc, former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, and author of major government commissioned reviews into housing supply and land use planning.

Bill Hughes, Global Head of Real Assets and Co Head of Private Markets at Legal and General. He is also Chair of the Property Industry Alliance, a trustee of the Urban Land Institute, and formerly held senior roles in property investment management.

Dame Diane Coyle, economist and Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She is also Director of the Productivity Institute and an academic adviser to the Competition and Markets Authority.

Lyn Garner, appointed to the Taskforce after Eamonn Boylan. Her background is in major public sector delivery, regeneration and housing, including senior leadership roles connected with London Legacy Development Corporation and local government.

Helen Gordon, Chief Executive of Grainger, described by GOV.UK as the UK’s largest publicly listed residential landlord and Build to Rent developer. She previously worked at RBS and Legal and General, and has experience connected to the development of Milton Keynes.

Kate Henderson, Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, described as the voice of England’s housing associations. She was previously Chief Executive of the Town and Country Planning Association.

Nick Raynsford, President of the Town and Country Planning Association, former MP and former Housing and Planning Minister. Since leaving Parliament he has held roles including Deputy Chairman of Crossrail, Chair of CICAIR and Director of Pocket Living.

Sowmya Parthasarathy, architect and urban designer at Arup, with experience in masterplans, strategic plans and urban design guides, including London’s Olympic Legacy Masterplan. She is also a UK Design Council Ambassador and sits on the London Design Review Panel.

Dr Wei Yang, town planner and urban designer, Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Task Force for Planning and Chairman of Wei Yang and Partners. She is also Chair of the Construction Industry Council and was President of the Royal Town Planning Institute in 2021.

This isn't democracy! this is the industry creating a self serving machine under the branding of government, its not neutral, measured or metered its the salivating machine feeding the rhetoric, not serving the people, just themselves.  Of course planning, housing, infrastructure and economic knowledge matter. But ordinary residents are entitled to look at that list and ask a very simple question. so where is the counter board members?? you know those from community, ecology and so forth?? these have no place in this as any resistance is crushed clearly.

Where is the voice for sanity?

Where is the voice for restraint?

Where is the voice for brownfield first?

Where is the voice for food security?

Where is the voice for rural identity?

Where is the voice for the countryside?

Where is the voice of the people?

Because what residents see is a system heavily shaped by the professional world of housing delivery, planning, infrastructure, regeneration, real estate, construction, urban design and development policy.

That may be called expertise in Whitehall.

To those of us living under the threat of Wychavon Town, it looks like a delivery machine.

It looks like the people who want to build, plan, finance, enable, manage or profit from large scale growth are given the microphone, while the people who will lose their countryside are handed a consultation form after the direction of travel has already been decided.

That is not balance.

That is not consent.

That is not local democracy.

If the countryside is to be sacrificed, the very least residents should expect is that the countryside has a strong voice at the table before the knife is raised.

Instead, we appear to have a system where Whitehall listens to housing numbers, planning consultants, delivery bodies, developers, infrastructure interests and growth targets, while local people are treated as noise to be managed.

Under the current national planning direction, communities are not being asked what future they want. They are being told what future they must accept.

That is not democracy in any meaningful sense.

It is especially galling when this is presented as local planning. There is nothing truly local about a process where government targets, national inspectors, strategic allocations and developer led schemes combine to overwhelm the voice of residents. Local people are left fighting from the sidelines while decisions of enormous consequence move forward as if consent has already been granted.

Wychavon Town is not just one proposal. It is the clearest example of a planning machine that now treats countryside as a delivery zone, villages as collateral damage and consultation as theatre.

It is not a small adjustment to the landscape. It is a deliberate overspill settlement, placed around Worcestershire Parkway and promoted as part of a wider regional housing solution. That matters. Because once the principle is accepted, the countryside between Worcester, Pershore and beyond becomes vulnerable to the next phase, the next application and the next supposed sustainable extension.

The council is now angry because government has taken a swing at its planning powers. We understand that anger. We share it. But local democracy cannot only matter when the council itself is being overruled. It must also matter when communities are being overruled.

Nigel Huddleston now appears outraged by this Whitehall power grab. On that point, many residents will agree with him. Planning decisions should stay local. Developers should not be handed a route around elected representatives.

But the question remains.

Where was this same outrage when Wychavon Town itself was being lined up?

Where was this defence of local democracy when open countryside around Worcestershire Parkway was being carved up for a proposed 10,000 home settlement?

Where was this anger when residents were being pushed through consultations that many felt already assumed the answer?

If local voices matter now, they should have mattered then.

If developer bypass is wrong now, then residents being effectively bypassed through strategic planning should also be wrong.

If national control over local planning is an outrage now, then national housing pressure forcing massive growth into rural Wychavon should also be an outrage.

You cannot defend local democracy only when it is politically convenient.

If Wychavon wants to fight for local planning, then it should also fight for the rural communities being asked to carry the burden of Wychavon Town.

It should fight for brownfield first.

It should fight for villages already stretched by sewage, traffic, schools and services.

It should fight for the countryside between Worcester and Pershore before it is permanently swallowed.

It should fight for a proper public enquiry before any more of this is nodded through.

We now need to fight more than ever.

This latest intervention proves exactly why this matters. Planning must be returned to the people elected by the community, not handed upwards to distant officials, inspectors or national bodies who do not live here, do not understand the area, and will not carry the consequences of their decisions.

Local planning should mean local accountability.

If councillors make decisions, residents can challenge them. We can write to them. We can vote them out. We can hold them to account in public. But when power is shifted away from elected local representatives and placed into the hands of inspectors and government departments, the public voice is pushed further away from the table.

That is not acceptable.

Planning must not be captured by the development industry.

Planning must not be dictated by Whitehall.

Planning must not treat countryside communities as collateral damage.

If new towns and major settlements are to be discussed, then local residents, farmers, rural communities, environmental voices and countryside campaigners must be in the room from the very beginning, not invited to comment once the machine is already rolling.

Wychavon Town is exactly why this fight matters. This is not just about one development. It is about whether communities still have any meaningful say over the future of the places they live in.

We must push back now.

We must demand that planning is brought back to those elected by the community.

We must demand proper public scrutiny before our countryside is sacrificed.

We must demand that brownfield comes first, infrastructure comes first, and local need comes first.

We must demand that planning is done with communities, not imposed upon them.

And we must make clear that Wychavon Town does not have the consent of the communities it will change forever.

The government has shown its hand. Developers already know the rules are stacked in their favour. The only thing left is public pressure, public scrutiny and public accountability.

Please sign the petition. Please share it. Please ask your councillors where they stand. Ask why local democracy matters when powers are taken from the council, but seems to matter far less when countryside is taken from the people.

Stop Wychavon Town.

Once it is gone, it is gone forever.