Angela Rayner is poised to introduce tougher sanctions on councils in England that block local housing developments.
Councils could be forced to approve new housing developments – overturning locally agreed plans – under stricter rules or risk handing over control of their planning departments to Whitehall officials.
Rayner, who has come under pressure this week for adding to her constituency residence and grace-and-favour home in London with the purchase of an £800,000 apartment near Brighton, already has considerable powers to overrule councils that block housing developments but is believed to be frustrated with continuing delays in the system.
It is understood that before the end of the year the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) will reduce the number of times a council can have planning appeals overturned before sanctions are imposed by central government.
Hundreds of councils are expected to fall foul of the new rules after Rayner established new building targets to achieve the government’s aim of 1.5m new homes by the end of the parliament.
The plan is already behind schedule according to building industry analysts after a slow start to the year by the major housebuilding firms.
Rayner is expected to force more councils to rewrite their local plans to include higher housing targets or be stripped of local decision-making powers.
An MHCLG spokesperson said: “The government is taking decisive action to deliver 1.5m homes through our plan for change, with major planning reforms and a landmark planning and infrastructure bill already introduced to drive housebuilding to its highest level in 40 years.
“We are exploring plans to go further by making it easier to intervene where councils consistently make poor-quality decisions about planning applications and prevent the delivery of the homes and infrastructure we need. This will help to get Britain building again and restore the dream of home ownership.”
Planning bodies say housebuilders have a surplus of planning approvals and the only barrier to an increase in housing starts is the economic slowdown and the reluctance of developers to jeopardise high prices by flooding the market with new homes.
However, pressure is mounting from developers in many areas, especially in commuter belts around major cities, that want to build private housing estates with few amenities or public transport links, which are often banned under local plans.
Last week Horsham district council in West Sussex said it would challenge in a judicial review a decision by planning inspectors to approve housebuilding on a golf course, overturning a council decision blocking the plan.
The council said the plans were “unsustainable” and lacked travel options other than by car. Within days of the judicial review announcement, Homes England announced a separate application to build 3,000 homes in the district, which Horsham said posed “significant implications for our district and its communities”.
It is pursuing the legal action against building on a golf course with the support of Active Travel England, “on the basis that the government-appointed planning inspector made significant legal errors”.
Horsham has an existing local plan that was devised in consultation with the Environment Agency, which put restrictions on the number of new homes because of a shortage of drinking water.
Local authorities are also under pressure to reduce emissions to meet net zero targets and integrate new developments into local plans.
Rayner is expected to cut the percentage of appeals that are allowed to be overturned before a local plan must be revised from 10% to 5% after a consultation with planning bodies during the spring and summer.
The Royal Town Planning Institute and the Town and Country Planning Association have objected to the move.
The RTPI said planning departments were facing a combination of low staffing levels and high demand and needed more support from central government.
Robbie Calvert, the head of policy at the RTPI, said: “We need to ensure that councils receive the effective investment necessary to achieve quality decisions in a timely manner.”
Hugh Ellis, the director of policy at the TCPA, said councils were having their carefully crafted local plans ripped up by the department to the detriment of the local environment.
In May, Wiltshire councils’s planning manager, Kenny Green, said there was a “very real risk of the authority entering special measures – which means the council cannot determine applications” after 7% of its applications were overturned.
Green said the council was also close to missing its housing provision target of 3,525 homes a year, a number that was nearly doubled last year by the housing minister.
Councils must demonstrate under local plans how they will increase supply over the next five years.
The National Planning Policy Framework said planning applications should be granted where there was no up-to-date development plan, unless certain policy protections “provide a strong reason for refusing the development”.
This year plans for new homes on flood plains in Kent and Somerset had been given the go-ahead by planning inspectors after appeals, against the advice of local planning officers.
Last year research by the Home Builders Federation found that councils, mostly in southern England, had spent more than £50m on external legal advice on planning appeals over the previous three years.
• This article was amended on 29 August 2025. An earlier version said Horsham was in Surrey; however, the town is in West Sussex.
