GEOFFREY LEAN: Burnham’s plans for mayors may look like local democracy in action – but it’s the exact opposite

Since Andy Burnham walked into No10, he has made much of his determination to devolve power to the regions.

Indeed, he has called his plan to transfer a raft of decision-making powers away from Westminster and Whitehall the ‘biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen’.

But Sunday’s revelation that he plans to give regional mayors the ability to over-rule councils and force through planning approval for housing estates and tower blocks is not an extension of local democracy but the exact opposite.

The victims of this shameless power grab will, of course, be the residents of our villages, towns and cities who will have no power to object effectively to sprawling housing estates and the sort of ugly edifices the King once described as ‘monstrous carbuncles’ being built in their neighbourhoods.

This initiative contradicts the PM’s pledge to ‘bring power home’ and is just the latest step in the authoritarian and mendacious planning campaign Labour has been waging since winning the general election just over two years ago.

Under the new proposals, mayors will be able to direct local authorities to approve developments of more than 150 homes, commercial spaces above 15,000 square metres, and any building of about ten storeys or more.

And they will also be empowered to give their own upfront permissions for schemes so that developers will not even need to apply to councils for the right to start building. 

Since ten of the 14 metro mayors are Labour they may well be used to rubber-stamp central government policy. And if they should fail to toe the line, ministers will retain the power to impose their own decisions anyway.

The scheme will add another layer of bureaucracy to the planning process at a time when the country is already very short of planning officers, and may well do little to achieve the Government’s arbitrary target of building 1.5million new homes within five years.

London mayor Sadiq Khan already has similar powers, but instead of rising, the rate of housebuilding in the capital has been falling.

And Mr Burnham’s latest proposal is only the latest in a string of anti-democratic interventions.

Just last week the Government directed councils to give a default ‘yes’ to housing near railway stations, even in the Green Belt, as part of its unparalleled assault on supposedly protected countryside.

Nearly nine out of ten Britons oppose building in the Green Belt – the cherished, health-giving ‘countryside next door’ for 30million people – so the 2024 Labour manifesto said it would be ‘committed to preserving’ it and pledged not to change ‘its purpose and general extent‘.

It did propose developing odd bits of ‘lower-quality’ protected land, dubbed ‘grey belt’, but ministers consistently indicated that the land concerned would consist of eyesores such as old car parks and disused petrol stations.

That, as we now know, was more barefaced deceit.

In practice, vast areas of pristine, hitherto protected land are being classified as ‘grey belt’: an area bigger than the whole of Surrey is authoritatively expected to be opened to development. 

The truth is that just about every developer who wants to build on the Green Belt is claiming that its site should become ‘grey belt’ – and the Government usually agrees. Mainly as a result, the size of the area being developed around London more than doubled last year.

Scandalously, such devastation is entirely unnecessary, even to meet the Government’s target.

Housebuilders are already sitting on land with planning permission for 1.4 million homes. As an unpublished government report admitted in 2024, nearly half the dwellings given permission over the previous decade had never been built.

And the tendency of successive governments to over-promise and under-deliver when it comes to housebuilding shows no sign of changing.

As the housing minister Matthew Pennycook said the other day, the five-year target is ‘really stretching’. After more than two years, the Government is only a quarter of the way there.

This, however, is not for lack of dictatorial moves by this Labour administration. Sir Keir Starmer vowed to ‘knock down those standing in the way’ of his plans.

And ministers are amending the requirement for Sports England to be consulted on planning applications after it managed to block 90 per cent of almost 400 plans to build on playing fields, and they restricted the public’s right to take decisions to a judicial review.

Meanwhile, they have instructed the Environment Agency to wave plans through while they slash protection for wildlife, nature and the landscape from development.

Labour is vulnerable. Its MPs now represent more than half of the constituencies containing Green Belt land and their voters are getting angry.

Mr Burnham may end up reaping a whirlwind.