Let Residents Into the Room: A Planning Question Time for Kingston
Photo: Eirian Evans , CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Planning committee meetings in Kingston are not secret. They are public, and residents can speak. But public access is not the same as public understanding. By the time a major application reaches the committee room, the officer report can run to hundreds of pages, the plans have been revised more than once, and residents are given a few minutes to compress months of concern into a speech. The result is a process that is legally correct and democratically thin.
This is not an attack on planning officers or councillors. Officers work within national policy and local plan rules, and councillors must take decisions that are defensible. But planning is where civic life becomes physical. It decides the shape of Kingston town centre, the future of estate regeneration, the pressure on school places and the quality of the streets residents walk every day. Decisions of that importance deserve a better public forum than a late-night committee and a technical report.
The proposal is simple: Kingston should pilot a regular, streamed residents' question time before major applications are decided. It would not be a decision-making body. It would not replace statutory consultation. It would not give residents a veto. It would give them a structured opportunity to ask questions, hear answers and understand the evidence before positions harden.
Public access is not public confidence
Recent 2026 cases show why this matters. The revised proposals for the Cambridge Road Estate have raised complex questions about tenure, density and phasing. A mid-rise scheme on Eden Street has prompted debate about height, townscape and retail frontage. A school expansion in Chessington has brought traffic and safeguarding concerns into the same conversation. Changes to parking controls near Kingston station have shown how a technical traffic order can feel like a neighbourhood decision made elsewhere.
In each case, residents have had formal opportunities to comment. In each case, many will have felt that the real conversation was happening in documents they could not fully digest. That gap between access and confidence is the problem. It is not solved by telling residents to read the report. It is solved by creating a forum where the report can be explained and tested.
What a residents' question time could look like
A pilot could run three times a year, timed around major applications or planning policy reviews. Questions could be submitted in advance and taken live where possible. The chair should be independent of the committee, with planning officers present to answer technical questions and councillors present to listen. The session should be streamed and transcribed, with answers published afterwards.
The legal boundaries matter. Planning decisions are quasi-judicial, and councillors must not pre-determine applications. A question time must therefore be carefully designed: it should focus on process, policy, evidence and the issues residents are raising, not on asking councillors to declare how they will vote. Monitoring officers should be involved from the start. The aim is better understanding, not a parallel committee.
The objection: it will slow things down
The obvious objection is that a new forum adds delay. Planning already has statutory timescales, and developers will warn that extra engagement makes Kingston a harder place to build. That concern deserves a serious answer.
But the current system already creates delay through appeal, dispute and distrust. Residents who feel ignored are more likely to object, more likely to seek judicial review, and less likely to accept the outcome. A well-run question time could reduce the temperature by giving people a clearer route to answers before the committee stage. It is not a tribunal. It is a structured conversation with a published record.
The cost would be modest compared with the value of major applications. A streamed session, a independent chair and officer support are not beyond the means of a borough that already runs complex committees. The question is whether the council sees public confidence as a cost or as part of good planning.
Why trust matters
Planning decisions are not just about buildings. They are about who gets to live in Kingston, how neighbourhoods change, and whether residents believe the rules are applied consistently. When people see a committee room packed with objectors and a decision taken after midnight, they do not conclude that the process is rigorous. They conclude that it is remote.
A residents' question time would not make difficult decisions easy. It would not satisfy everyone. But it would give councillors a better sense of local evidence and give residents a clearer understanding of the constraints. That is a modest democratic reform, and Kingston should be willing to try it.
The council should commit to a pilot in the 2026-27 municipal year, report back to scrutiny, and publish what changes. If it works, make it permanent. If it does not, explain why. Either way, residents deserve more than a late-night slot and a technical appendix. They deserve a room where the questions can be asked properly.
