Tory planning rebels are coming under pressure to back plans to boost local community voices and speed up house building.
Labour ’s Planning and Local Representation Bill will impose a time limit on planning applications to incentivise faster building completion while giving communities the right to a fair hearing in planning applications.
Many Tory MPs fear government plans could limit communities from engaging in individual planning decisions and rent control from councils to developers.
The government had announced a bill to loosen planning rules that would allow housing to be built on greenfield sites much more easily.
Bob Seeley, the Tory MP for the Isle of Wight, said last month that communities should not be treated “as the planning equivalent of a foie gras goose with ever more housing shoved down them”.
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The number of planning permissions granted by councils for new homes has more than doubled since 2010, with nine in 10 planning applications approved.
But research from the Tory-led LGA found fewer than half of planning applications granted in the previous decade have been built out, with 1.1 million homes yet to be built.
Shadow Communities Secretary Steve Reed said: "Residents will be gagged from objecting to inappropriate and oversized developments so developers can make vast profits at local people's expense."
The recent MHCLG Select Committee made the recommendation that “all individuals must still be able to comment and influence upon all individual planning proposals”.
The Tories planning reforms were considered a key factor in the loss of the Chesham and Amersham by-election, raising concerns in Downing Street that they may need to weaken their proposals.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph after the by-election, Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said the current planning system “needs reforming”.
He went on to say “it excludes local people” and is “cumbersome, complicated, and hugely difficult for ordinary people to navigate”.
