Wednesday's agenda is three applications, every one from a councillor or council staff. Slough delegated 99.19% of its decisions to officers last year.

Slough’s Planning Committee meets on Wednesday evening for the first time since 29 July. Three planning applications are on the agenda. Every one of them is there for the same reason: the applicant is a Slough councillor or a member of council staff.

None of the three has attracted a single objection. Officers recommend that all three be handed back to the Planning Manager for approval.

The councillor’s application

Item 5 is a change of use at 27 and 29 Chalvey Road West, SL1 2NF, in Chalvey ward. The ground floor of both properties was last in use as offices. The application would turn both into studio flats, and for number 29 it is retrospective, because that flat already exists.

The officer’s report is direct about why councillors are seeing it at all:

Under the current constitution, this application is to be determined at Planning Committee, as the applicant is a Councillor of Slough Borough Council.

The September report gives the applicant only as “Ahmed”. The council’s own report to the committee on 28 January 2026, on the same property and under the same reference series, names him: Councillor Iftakhar Ahmed. That earlier application, P/12595/008, was for a single storey outbuilding to form a gym at the rear of number 27. It carried the identical councillor declaration, the same case officer and the same agent, and it was approved on 2 February 2026.

Councillor Ahmed represents Wexham Court for the Conservatives and is the council’s Lead Member for Housing, Homelessness and Communities, according to his page on the council’s democracy site. His term runs to 9 May 2027.

Two things are worth stating plainly, because they cut both ways.

  • He is not a member of the Planning Committee. The nine members are councillors Siobhan Dauti, Zaffar Ajaib, Martin F. Carter, Haqeeq Dar, Harjinder S. Gahir, Adil Iftakhar, Mark Instone, Subhash Mohindra and Neel Rana.
  • One of those nine, Councillor Gahir, is the other councillor for Wexham Court, the ward Councillor Ahmed represents. Item 2 on Wednesday’s agenda is the committee’s standing guidance on predetermination and predisposition.

What the application actually proposes

The two flats would each have an internal floor area of 50 square metres, with a bedroom and lounge combined at the front and a separate kitchen to the rear. There are no external alterations.

The report’s own assessment records the following:

  • Each flat meets the nationally described space standard, which requires 50 square metres for a one bedroom, two person single storey dwelling. The committee resolved to adopt those standards on 31 October 2018.
  • The scheme effectively renews an earlier permission, P/12595/005, approved on 14 June 2022, which was never implemented inside the three year window.
  • The council’s Developer’s Guide would normally require three to four parking spaces for two one bedroom flats. None are provided. Officers say the requirement should be relaxed, citing a bus stop 50 metres away and short stay on-street bays that “will naturally preclude the use of the private car”.
  • A shared rear amenity area of 65 square metres would serve the flats, with cycle storage secured by condition.
  • Site notices went up on 15 July for 21 days, then again on 30 July for a further 14 days after the plans were amended. No comments or objections were received.

The application was registered on 26 June 2026 and its eight week determination date was 21 August. That date has passed.

The two staff applications

The other two items are householder extensions. Both officer reports carry the same sentence as the Chalvey Road West one, with “a staff member of Slough Borough Council” in place of “a Councillor”. We are not naming the two applicants, who are not public officeholders.

  • 3 Rodney Way, Colnbrook, SL3 0PN (Colnbrook and Poyle ward). Demolition of a conservatory and a single storey side and rear extension for a kitchen and diner, a utility and boiler room and a WC and shower. It extends 1.8 metres from the side elevation and 3.35 metres from the rear. Registered 21 July, eight week date 15 September.
  • 11 Cranbourne Road, SL1 2XF (Cippenham Manor ward). Single storey side and rear extensions to form a ground floor bedroom with an attached wet room for disabled use. It extends 1.9 metres from the original side elevation and 10.45 metres from the original rear elevation. Amended plans cut the width of the rear part from 4.5 metres to 3.825 metres. Registered 13 July, eight week date 7 September.

Neither drew any comments or objections. Both eight week dates have passed. Officers recommend delegating both to the Planning Manager for approval.

How rare this committee is

Slough decides almost all of its planning applications without councillors seeing them, and it does so more completely than almost any other authority in England.

In the year ending March 2026, the council received 678 applications and made 617 decisions, and 99.19% of those decisions were delegated to officers. The England figure is 96.39%. That leaves roughly five decisions taken by the Planning Committee itself across the whole year. The figures are from MHCLG live table P134.

The same table shows Slough granted 77.8% of the applications it decided. England granted 87.07%.

The council’s own description of the committee says it “determines planning applications for major development”, and that “the majority of applications received by Development Control are minor applications and are decided by Officers under the Council’s scheme of delegation to Officers”. Wednesday’s agenda contains no major development.

We counted the application items on every Planning Committee agenda published so far in 2026.

Planning application items on Slough Planning Committee agendas in 2026 A bar chart of the number of planning application items on each Slough Planning Committee agenda in 2026. January had three, February was cancelled, March had seven, April had none, May had one, June had none, July had one, and the September meeting has three. There was no meeting in August. Counting Wednesday's three, that is fifteen application items across seven meetings in nine months. 15 applications in nine months, and three are on Wednesday Planning application items on each 2026 agenda. Two meetings carried none at all; February was cancelled. 7 4 1 3 Jan cancelled Feb 7 Mar 0 Apr 1 May 0 Jun 1 Jul 3 Sep Wednesday No meeting is scheduled for August. The next one after Wednesday is 28 October. Across the year to March 2026 the council delegated 99.19% of its 617 planning decisions to officers. Sources: Slough Daily count of Planning Committee agendas on democracy.slough.gov.uk; MHCLG live table P134, year ending March 2026. Graphic by Slough Daily
Two of the six meetings held so far in 2026 carried no planning application at all.

The committee meets monthly on paper. From January to September it had eight dates in the calendar. The February one was cancelled, no August date was scheduled at all, and two of the six meetings it has held so far had nothing to decide. Counting Wednesday’s three items, that is 15 applications in nine months.

An inspector said the council behaved unreasonably

Item 8 on Wednesday’s agenda is the routine report of appeal decisions, dated 14 September. It covers two cases, and the second is worth reading.

5 Blandford Road South, SL3 7RT, in Langley, appealed against two conditions attached to permission for a front porch and side and rear extensions. The appeal was granted on 4 September 2026. The council’s own report records what the inspector found:

The commentary within the Officer Report was not, in the view of the Planning Inspector, convincing or substantiated with regard to specific harms.

And on costs:

It follows from the above that the Planning Inspector considered that the inclusion of those conditions without sufficient justification amounted to unreasonable behaviour because the appellant had to pursue the appeals process which could have otherwise been avoided if the conditions had not been imposed.

The council’s own application for costs against the appellant was dismissed.

The other appeal went the council’s way. A certificate of lawful development at 37 Thurston Road, SL1 3JW, for use of part of the site as a care home for up to six adults, was dismissed on 3 September 2026.

What it means for you

You cannot speak at this one. The committee’s public participation scheme lets a resident speak only if they made a written objection or lodged a petition, and then registered to speak. No objections were received on any of the three applications, so nobody qualifies.

You can still watch. The meeting is at 6.30pm on Wednesday 23 September in the Council Chamber at Observatory House, 25 Windsor Road, SL1 2EL. The full agenda and reports pack are on the council’s democracy site.

If you want a say on a planning application near you, the moment to act is the consultation, not the committee. On these figures, roughly 99 in every 100 Slough decisions never reach councillors. A written objection during the site notice period is the only thing that both puts your view on the record and gives you the right to speak if the application does go to committee.

Check the dates on your own street. All three applications on Wednesday’s agenda are past their eight week determination date, two of them by more than a fortnight. That is common and is not in itself a failing, but it is why a site notice that went up in July can still be live in late September.

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