There are many positives in mayors being given greater powers to intervene in strategically important planning applications.
Anything that helps unlock major housing and commercial development, specifically where local decision-making has become an obstacle, should be regarded positively.
However, a new route through the planning system is not necessarily a faster one. If a mayor calls in an application, they become responsible for determining it which requires either a public hearing or written representations.
That brings additional process, time and cost. For a genuinely strategic scale scheme this may be justified, but the threshold of just 150 homes raises the question of whether mayoral intervention could sometimes be disproportionate.
DECISIVE ACTION
There are lessons to learn from London. Mayoral oversight can provide a valuable strategic perspective, but it can also introduce another layer of planning policy and another political decision-maker.
Call-in powers only have value if mayors are prepared to use them decisively, consistently and on planning grounds rather than according to political convenience.
There is also a geographical limitation as outside London, most mayors are in the north of England. Many of the areas gaining these powers are therefore places where political leadership is already broadly supportive of growth and development.
I am currently more concerned about the challenges of securing planning permission for homes in non-Labour controlled areas where development pressure is acute but where there is no mayor with equivalent powers to intervene.
So while this is a positive reform, particularly for genuinely strategic sites, we should be realistic about what it can achieve. Mayoral call-in powers may rescue individual schemes and help align development with wider growth ambitions, but they are less likely, on their own, to transform the number of homes securing permission without the delay and expense of an appeal.
The test will not simply be whether mayors have these powers, but whether they use them proportionately, predictably and quickly.
