The leader of the opposition on Kirklees Council – Green Party leader Clr Andrew Cooper – has branded Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s planning reforms “deeply undemocratic.”

Mr Burnham wants to bypass local councils on large-scale housing developments and allow regional mayors – such as West Yorkshire’s Tracy Brabin – to overrule council planning committees.

The proposed planning reforms would empower regional mayors across England to ‘call in’ and override local council planning decisions, enabling them to approve housing and infrastructure projects to accelerate regional growth and combat local blocking.

Mr Burnham wants to speed up house building and his proposal would apply to planning applications with more than 150 homes and also commercial buildings of more than 15,000 square metres or buildings over 30 metres.

Clr Cooper said: “It is simply wrong to take powers further away from local people on decisions that affect their communities and their quality of life.

“Local councils should have the power to turn down planning applications if they have good reasons to do so.

“Developers already have the right to appeal against decisions so the system is already stacked in their favour.

“It is not councils that are preventing houses being built, it is developers. Councils have granted planning permission for over 1.4 million since 2007 that developers simply haven’t built.

“Taking powers away from councils is not the answer. The Government should be putting more pressure on developers to actually develop where they already have permission.

“This proposal to take planning powers away from local councils is deeply undemocratic.

“Labour lost every single council seat in Kirklees at the last local elections yet under these proposals Tracy Brabin, West Yorkshire’s Labour Mayor, could overrule a decision to refuse planning permission by a Kirklees planning committee.

“That is bad enough but when Tracy was last elected in 2024 she did not have these planning powers. She has no mandate from voters to make these decisions.

“Andy Burnham says he is in favour of devolution but is it really devolution when you take powers away from the local level to a remote regional mayor?

“It is the concentration of power in one individual. It’s devolution, Andy, but not as we know it.”

Meanwhile, the Government has announced almost £10 billion in funding to build thousands more quality council, social and affordable homes.

West Yorkshire is set to receive £441 million to build around 4,000 new homes.

Mayor Brabin (above) said: “It’s unacceptable that families across West Yorkshire are having to put up with temporary accommodation, with hundreds of children without a safe and secure place to call home.

“As someone who grew up in a council estate, for me this is personal. I want every child in West Yorkshire to have that same stable foundation that I had growing up.

“With almost half a billion pounds of investment, we will deliver thousands of much-needed council and social homes across our great region, creating a more secure and affordable West Yorkshire for local families.”

Main image by: Huddersfield Hub photographer SEAN DOYLE