Reg Little looks at how the new parliaments/area committees for city government will work . . .

Anyone submitting a planning application will be directly affected by the new-look council. For, with the axing of the council planning committee, responsibility for planning decisions will pass to the five local parliaments/area committees.

With Lord Falconer, the Minister of Housing and Planning, threatening to strip the city council of its planning powers, there will be no "bedding in" time for the new system. Oxford finished bottom of a recent planning performance league table, which showed it to be the slowest council in the country in dealing with planning applications. Some might say things can only get better.

Others will shiver at the confusion and extra bureaucracy that may lie ahead, not least because of the strong emphasis on public participation in the planning process.

Between nine and 12 local councillors will sit on parliaments/area committees, which will meet once a month. They will sit behind tables facing members of the public, who will be given the opportunity to speak on planning applications.

Yesterday, the city council announced the appointment of the first four area co-ordinators who will play a key role in the new system. It will be advertising for two more in May.

Letting loose councillors - who, unlike members of the old planning committee, will not be fully indoctrinated in the subtleties of planning law - will be seen by some as a dangerous way of dealing with what is a quasi-judicial process.

Mr Paul Ingram, said: "In many ways, they will be more like public meetings than committee meetings. It will mean the public having clear and easy input into the decision-making process.

"I think a bigger danger than the prospect of disruptive behaviour is the risk of having the same people turning up to speak at each meeting. In other words, empowering a few rather than the whole of the community. But at least it will give people the chance to speak when issues come up that impact on them."

Mr John Goddard, the last chairman of the city planning committee, is confident that the area committees will speed things up.

"The time-wasting ping-pong of applications going back and forth, twice from planning committee to council, will be ended. If an application reaches council, it will be decided in a one-hit process, with, for the first time, the benefit of officer advice at council."

Some planning officers are privately saying that the parliaments/area committees will bring chaos. With the North Oxford Committee due to meet on November 1, one told me: "It's a recipe for chaos and disaster. It's all been pushed through in a rush; they have simply not worked out proper timetables and budgets.

"The great fear is that local opinion is going to have too much sway with councillors. It will be too easy to refuse applications, with the voice of locals kicking up a fuss, always outweighing whatever the planning merits are. No one will give a hoot about local and national planning policies."

The officer believed more cases would end up going to appeal. "If costs are awarded against them, where will that leave the area committees?"

The Government has already warned councils not to be reckless in handing over power.

Guidelines say the Government will intervene if executive functions are handed over "too extensively or without clear systematic limitations".

But the planning officer said: "We are actually taking bets about which one of these area committees will declare unilateral independence first."

Until this year an astonishingly slow system existed whereby every single application had to be signed off by the chief planning officer. Now the bulk of straightforward planning applications will not even go to committee but will be decided on by planning officers.

A very small number of applications that have major implications for wider areas of the city or applications that straddle boundaries will go to the strategic development control committee.

The Government has set a target for the city council, requiring it to deal with 65 per cent of decisions within eight weeks by the end of March. One way or another, planning is the single area where the new parliaments must win an early vote of confidence.