PLANNING policy across much of the region could be written in Whitehall, after ministers lost patience with foot-dragging local councils.

A strict deadline of “early 2017” has been set for all town halls to produce robust ‘local plans’, dictating where development is allowed and prohibited.

If councils fail to act – ten years after first being urged to do so – the department for communities and local government (DCLG) will “intervene to arrange for the plan to be written”.

In ministers’ sights are seven authorities in the North-East and North Yorkshire, none of which have published the detailed blueprints.

They are; Hartlepool, Sunderland, Scarborough, Craven, Northumberland, North Tyneside and the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

However, the National Park Authority hit back, insisting it would publish its plan next week and criticising ministers for moving the goalposts on planning.

Its plan is likely to be controversial, because it will allow people from outside the area to snap up homes for the first time, a so-called ‘open market’ policy.

Half of homes at sites where more than six units are being built will be available for non-locals, in return for developers stumping up cash for more affordable homes elsewhere.

Peter Stockton, the Authority’s head of sustainable development, said it had been forced into the move by new rules on affordable homes and pressure to increase income.

He said: “I’m confident that we will be okay because we will be publishing our local plan next Monday and will be up to date with planning policy.

“The Government keeps changing the planning system, for example with changes to permitted development last year, which means we have to go back to it each time.

“But it’s easier for us to move more quickly on this now, because we are a much smaller authority and only 20,000 people live here.”

The deadline may prove a tougher challenge for the likes of City of York Council, which is believed to have been without any form of local plan since the 1950s.

The National Trust has led criticism that areas without local plans are at the mercy of developers with greater licence to gobble up the countryside.

That is because the fate of green land is then decided according to the controversial 2012 National Policy Planning Framework (NPPF), which favours development.

Across England, 82 per cent of authorities have published local plans, but the remaining 59 have not.

Brandon Lewis, the planning minister, said: “Local authorities have had more than a decade to produce a local plan. Most have done so.

“In cases where no local plan has been produced by early 2017, we will intervene to arrange for the plan to be written, in consultation with local people.”