Major Dacorum planning applications can now bypass the borough council

The Secretary of State has designated Dacorum Borough Council, allowing developers to submit major planning applications to the Planning Inspectorate rather than to the local planning authority.

Designation is a sanction. It is used when ministers decide a council is too slow, or its performance on major applications has fallen below a threshold. It does not abolish local planning. It does mean the largest schemes: the ones that change a skyline or a village edge: can skip the committee room in Hemel.

Residents still have a right to comment. The difference is who reads those comments, and whether a local member can move a refusal. For Hemel Garden Communities, Tring’s contested allocations and infill on Berkhamsted’s steep valley sides, that change in venue is not technical. It is political.

Dacorum Daily will log every major application that takes this route, alongside those that remain with the borough, so the two streams do not disappear into different websites.