Thursday 21st May 2026
When putting pen to paper for this column, the age-old adage that a week is a long time in politics has rarely felt more accurate. The story of the day was the local elections, but in short order that narrative has widened into a potential national leadership contest, a by-election and fresh speculation about the shape of local leadership.
What is unmistakable is the scale of change. Reform UK surged by around 1,450 councillors, Labour lost around 1,500, the Conservatives were down more than 560 and the Greens were up more than 440. With Reform and the Greens collectively outpolling Labour and the Conservatives, the decline of traditional parties continues as voting behaviour fragment further. Just as important as the party arithmetic is the map: more councils now sit in No Overall Control (NOC), and more places have shifted political colour or moved from single-party control.
For the sector, this matters because elections don’t just change the politics, they change the process. Planning is a quasi-judicial system, but it is also a democratic one, and it runs on relationships, member confidence and institutional memory. When you combine political churn with a large cohort of brand-new councillors, the immediate effect can often be greater friction in decision-making.
New councillors, understandably, want to demonstrate visibility and responsiveness to the electorate. One of the quickest ways to do that is to make sure applications that would ordinarily be signed off under delegated powers are instead heard in public at planning committee. ‘Call-in’ powers vary by authority, but the practical outcome is similar: more schemes go to committee, more items are deferred and more officer time is pulled into additional reports, briefings and presentations.
In NOC councils, those dynamics are amplified. Committee chairs and cabinets can change quickly, informal ways of working have to be renegotiated, and the margin for misunderstanding widens when members are still learning what is (and isn’t) a material planning consideration. It can also take time for a new administration to form in NOC authorities, which can elongate decision-making in the early weeks as roles, priorities and governance arrangements settle.
Across housing and development organisations, that churn is being felt immediately. Council leaders, housing portfolio-holders and scrutiny chairs may have changed but so too have ward councillors who are often the first port of call for residents. In practice, that means two things: more member interest in live planning decisions – including a greater willingness to call-in, question or vote against applications as a visible sign of responsiveness – and a likely increase in day-to-day casework as new members begin picking up resident issues.
To my mind, the property sector’s response should be equally practical: track who has been elected, reach out early and make it easy for new members to understand your footprint in their wards – what you manage, what you are building and the quickest way to get the right issue to the right person. Clear, consistent routes for contact and escalation become just as important as the planning strategy, particularly in the first few months of a new council term.
Given the other shift is political breadth, engagement needs to widen. For years, many in the sector have built their local engagement playbooks around Labour and Conservative-led administrations. With Reform and the Greens increasing their representation in many places, alongside greater political fragmentation, there are less tested delivery programmes. The onus is on us to explain, plainly and locally, how housing proposals translate into resident outcomes: affordability, management standards, retrofit, design quality, infrastructure and long-term stewardship.
The overall procedural slowdown also lands at an awkward moment nationally. The government’s headline ambition is to deliver 1.5 million homes over this Parliament. Regardless of how achievable it seems, delivery hinges on up-to-date local plans, well-briefed committees and decisions being made at pace. A system that is more fragmented politically, with more first-time members and more committee churn, makes that harder to achieve.
It is tempting, particularly in the first weeks of a new administration, for some councillors, depending on their politics and pre-election campaigns, to think that local people are anti-development. The picture is more nuanced. Research by More in Common suggests the public does not see housing and environmental concerns as mutually exclusive. In fact, half agree the government can both build new homes and protect nature, and people tend to judge development case-by-case rather than oppose it as a matter of principle. However, in an age of identity politics where pragmatism is in short supply, focusing on the human benefits of development – the difference it makes to individuals, families and communities, must surely be part of the solution.
The message for the sector is clear: if schemes arrive framed as ‘growth at all costs’, they will struggle. But where proposals are genuinely place-led, take local infrastructure into account and are broadly nature-positive, there is political and public permission to proceed.
So, what should the sector do now? First, map the politics as carefully as the planning policy: understand who is new, who chairs committee and where informal coalitions sit.
Second, invest early in member engagement and briefings that focus on material considerations, viability, design quality and deliverable mitigation. The aim should be to help councillors feel confident, not cornered.
Third, expect longer timetables and build that into transactions and programmes; a committee route is not failure, it is often the new normal. Finally, treat nature and affordability as core components of the offer, not bolt-ons. In a fast-changing local government landscape, the winners will be those who make it easiest for newly elected members to say ‘yes’ in public – because schemes are demonstrably good, and the decision is defensible.
Claire Kober
Managing Director (Homes), Pinnacle Group
This article was originally featured in Property Week, on 19th May 2026.