Should the government introduce planning reforms to cut pre-application time by up to 12 months?

Voters here backed the planning shake-up comfortably, 35 to 9, a 60-point margin that puts this among the more emphatic verdicts on any governance question. On a topic that usually splits along nimby/pro-growth lines, the chamber tilted firmly towards speed and deregulation.

The clearest pattern is generational: 25-34s backed the reform 10-1 and 35-44s 10-2, but support thinned with each decade, dropping to 57% among 55-64s, the only cohort where the no vote came close to parity. It reads as a younger, more mobile electorate favouring faster delivery of housing and infrastructure over the older cohort's traditional caution about planning safeguards.

The gender split is starker still. Men voted 85% Yes, essentially mirroring the overall result, while the small group of women split evenly 3-3. That gap echoes a recurring theme on planning and development questions, where women's votes tend to weight process and local scrutiny more heavily than the efficiency case developers and ministers usually make.

Taken together, this was a vote won by younger and male voters convinced that twelve months and a billion pounds are worth cutting loose, against a smaller but not negligible bloc unmoved by the savings pitch.