It comes as tensions between councils of all political stripes are rising with ministers, who are desperate to hit their target of 1.5 million new homes in England by the end of the parliament.

Politics Hub: Latest updates from Westminster

In one case shared with Sky News, a council northwest of London refused a planning application for a 256-home development despite housing minister Matthew Pennycook directing councillors to approve the case 24 hours earlier.

Councillors on a planning committee at Three Rivers District Council rejected the application last week, with 10 votes to refuse and one abstention, on the grounds the plan might harm the green belt, concern over flooding, and the loss of hedgerows.

However, the council's own planning officer had recommended the site be approved for development, concluding it met the government definition of "grey belt" and that while "adverse impacts would arise to the local character/landscape", the positives of the scheme outweighed those harms.

Read more from Sky News:
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'A declaration of war'

Burlington Property Group has written to Mr Pennycook, saying the decision is "a direct affront to your ministerial authority; it is nothing short of a 'declaration of war' on the government's core policy objective to increase the delivery of new homes and for local authority decisions and local plan making powers to be exercised in support of this core national policy objective".

The developer is asking the minister to "call in" - or override - the council's decision.

The council did not respond to Sky News's requests for comment.

Sky News is aware of growing friction between ministers and councils over the failure to grant planning approvals, despite changing planning laws and prioritising growth above all else.

Ministers intend to make a major intervention after the local elections but do not want to be seen discussing planning before polling day in May in case it disadvantages Labour council candidates who appeal to those who oppose developments.

This comes as Sky News publishes the results of a four-month investigation using Freedom of Information (FOI) laws to interrogate every local planning council in England about the number of unreasonable decisions that resulted in over £20m of costs paid out.

Using the available data, we can reveal the first-ever league table of councils that have a high number of overturned decisions where costs were paid and those with the highest costs paid out.

*Incomplete data.

More than 100 local councils did not respond to the FOI requests, while hundreds more only released partial data. The information on the number of council planning decisions deemed "unreasonable" by the Planning Inspectorate, which hears appeals, is not collected by central government, meaning this is the first known exercise of this kind.

Councils say they are trying to keep costs low and sometimes win costs in cases which are appealed by developers.

Watch the full report on our investigation in the video at the top of this article.

Will Labour hit their target?

The government has already made its first major attempt to redraw the planning system through the Planning and Infrastructure Act, which became law in February.

However, critics say it leaves too much of the current system in place, still giving councils too great an opportunity to stand in the way of swift and fair decisions.

Privately, some figures in government welcome the Sky News research for shining a spotlight on a major problem they want to tackle.

But the fact they have decided not to say so publicly shows the tension between the need to build and the strength of community opposition to projects.

There has been discussion in government about a second planning bill, but that appears to have been shelved after being deemed too difficult.

The closer we get to the next general election, the more squeamish MPs are likely to be about decisions that disempower communities. That makes achieving the 1.5m new homes target look like an even more distant prospect.

Four ambulances were destroyed in the blaze following a "loud explosion" that erupted at 1.40am on Monday at the base for volunteer group Hatzola in Golders Green.

Metropolitan Police said CCTV footage showed three hooded individuals pouring accelerant on the parked vehicles, with investigators analysing hours of footage to identify the suspects.

Islamist group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) has claimed responsibility online for the attack, which is so far being treated as an antisemitic hate crime rather than a terror attack.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned the incident as a "deeply shocking, antisemitic attack", amid criticism from Jewish leaders and the Conservative Party that the government needed to do more to combat anti-Jewish hate.

"Antisemitism has no place in our society, and it's really important we all stand together at a moment like this," he said.

On Monday night, about 250 protesters - including many waving Israeli flags and signs saying, "no Jew hate" - gathered in Golders Green, with some chanting "Keir Starmer, Jew harmer".

Met chief warns of 'grave' threat from Iran

HAYI, which is a newly formed group believed to be aligned with Iran, appears to have posted a video on Telegram showing a map of the location of the attack and the ambulances on fire.

Metropolitan Police said detectives were aware of the claim of responsibility and were making enquiries to determine its authenticity.

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said while it was "too early" to attribute the attack to Iran, the "rapid growth in recent years of Iranian state threats is grave".

"Britain's Jewish community has in recent years been increasingly targeted by individuals, groups and hostile states, intent on spreading fear, hate and harm," he said.

Commander Helen Flanagan, head of counter-terrorism policing in London, said investigators had already gathered a large amount of CCTV footage from the local area, with an online portal being launched for witnesses to provide more.

"We're aware this attack has caused a great amount of concern amongst the Jewish and wider community in the area, but I want to reassure the public that we have officers working around the clock to identify those responsible," she said.

'We need to root out this hatred'

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the attack was an "attack on this country and on us all".

"Jewish life in this country is indivisible from our national life," she told the Commons.

"Freedom of Jewish worship is an embodiment of who we are - as is the freedom of British Jews to go about their lives in safety and without fear."

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said there had been an "increase in the hatred of Jews" and Jewish people wanted to see actions "not just words".

"We need to root out this hatred from its source. It's coming from many places, a lot of misinformation, and even in some extreme cases, extreme Islamist groups," she said.

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Israel's president expressed the country's "strength and solidarity" with Britain's Jewish community after the Golders Green attack.

"We will continue to stand together shoulder-to-shoulder with you in the critical fight against antisemitism," he said.

The UK's chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the "horrific" attack was an "act of deep evil", adding that there had been an increase in antisemitic incidents across the world.

"It's an outright miracle that nobody was injured," he said.

Witnesses reported hearing a "very loud explosion", with some nearby residents evacuating their homes, while firefighters battled to bring the blaze under control.

The vehicle was hit by an Air Canada regional jet at New York's LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night as it responded to another incident.

An audio recording reveals that a controller initially gave the fire engine clearance to cross runway four, telling "truck one and company" to "cross four, Delta".

But the message then changes to "stop there, please", before panic sets in and the controller pleads "stop, stop, stop, truck one, stop".

For reasons that are so far unclear, the message went unheeded, and the aircraft's nose ploughed into the fire engine, which rolled it over.

A flight attendant was found outside still strapped into her seat, sources told Sky's US partner network NBC News, but the pilot and co-pilot were killed.

Authorities said two people in the fire engine were hurt, but their injuries were not life-threatening.

The Bombardier CRJ-900 had just landed from Montreal and was carrying about 70 passengers and four crew. Forty-one of them were taken to hospitals, some with serious injuries.

Images show the aircraft's nose ripped off, with the damaged emergency vehicle on its side nearby.

The fire engine had been responding to reports of a strange odour on another plane.

One passenger, Rebecca Liquori, told local TV station News12 Long Island: "Everybody just jolted out of their seats. People hit their heads. People were bleeding."

Audio from roughly 20 minutes after the crash appears to show the air traffic controller blaming himself.

"We were dealing with an emergency earlier," he says. "I messed up."

Another recording reveals the controller had been trying to find a gate for a United Airlines flight that had declared an emergency due to an odour that had sickened flight attendants on board.

National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters investigators would want to interview the traffic controller and acknowledged the incident would have been "traumatic" for them.

Jazz Aviation was operating the service, which normally takes about 90 minutes, on behalf of Air Canada.

More than 600 flights to and from LaGuardia had been cancelled by midday, according to FlightAware.com. The airport has since reopened.

Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said that the airport would operate on ​reduced ⁠capacity ⁠for "some time" in a press conference.

President Donald Trump told reporters it was a "terrible" situation, adding that there had been a "mistake".

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There is a well-documented shortage of air traffic controllers in the US, but former Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control chief Mike McCormick told AP that LaGuardia is "not a control tower that has perennial staffing problems".

The airport is also one of 35 in the US with an advanced surface surveillance system to track planes and other vehicles on the tarmac.

We were promised superintelligence but instead got "AI slop" - clips-for-clicks of people and pets doing funny, diverting, but ultimately pointless things.

Or worse.

Deepfake videos of politicians or celebrities have improved in line with the advancing sophistication of AI video-generating models.

A surge of supposedly "educational" AI-generated video on platforms like YouTube Kids, say campaigners, threatens to misinform, or at best confuse, young minds.

Then there's the film and TV industry, understandably furious that their stories, actors and characters appear to be being used to train, without permission or remuneration, AI video models.

Models so powerful they can spit out an algorithmic pastiche of their work at a fraction of the cost and effort, threatening to upend their industry.

But are we starting to see watchable, arguably worthwhile, AI-generated content out there?

It was a young, blonde, American Instagram influencer that stood out to me. No different to any other of her TikTok generation, except for the fact that she can travel through time.

Chloe vs History - and you'll have to watch our video report to find out who "Chloe" really is - strikes a new balance between entertainment and education.

While such accounts might be at the least controversial end of the AI video debate, the new model behind them isn't.

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Seedance 2.0 is uncannily good.

Developed by TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance, it may have the advantage of having been trained on billions of TikTok users' posts.

But as with all large AIs, it's clearly been trained on video its developers don't own.

US film studios are understandably afraid that AI, and a Chinese one at that, is profiting from them - then coming for their profits.

Though perhaps human creativity isn't dead.

In making this report, we learned AI isn't very good at making watchable video on its own. A disruptive tool, most definitely. A destructive one? Not so sure.

Pamela Gwinnett isolated 89-year-old Joan Green from her family during the COVID-19 pandemic, convinced Joan to give her lasting power of attorney, then raided her life savings.

Gwinnett spent almost £300,000 of retired accountant Joan's money on Botox, expensive meals and mortgages on properties she owned.

She fled to Tenerife and did not attend her trial, but was given a six-year prison sentence in her absence last year for theft and fraud by abuse of position.

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who is the local MP for Ms Green's family, told Sky News: "Here she was, found guilty, sentenced to six years.

"What a way to have your sentence, in the sun in Tenerife! Lap of luxury.

"Living in an apartment, taking the sun every day, going out for meals."

He added: "People will be asking - why? I'm also asking why. That extradition order needs to take place now. Enough is enough. Let's get on with it."

The Speaker said he fears there could be other victims out there.

"My worry is, how many others have also lost money in the same way?" he said.

He added: "She was a master of manipulation of vulnerable people. So please, if there are other people out there, do come forward. I don't think this is a one-off. I hope it is, but I suspect not."

Joan, from Chorley, Lancashire, died in 2022.

Gwinnett, 63, fled to Tenerife in breach of her bail conditions while awaiting trial and has been living in a picturesque seaside apartment in the south of the island for the last 11 months.

When Sky News caught up with her, despite her conviction, she claimed Joan's family had taken the money, adding: "They have made me a scapegoat."

The Speaker said it was "appalling" that Lancashire Police had initially dismissed Joan's family's concerns as a civil matter.

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When presented with the same evidence - gaping holes in Joan's bank accounts - Greater Manchester Police launched a criminal investigation.

Lancashire Police said: "We can confirm that in March 2023 we were contacted in relation to an allegation of fraud.

"Our handling of that allegation is currently subject to an ongoing complaint which is with our Professional Standards Department and for that reason it would be inappropriate to comment any further at this time."

The Speaker thanked Sky News for our investigation into Gwinnett.

"These people are scamming vulnerable people," he said. "Without you, we wouldn't be highlighting this case nationally and internationally".