June 2026 · Guide

How long do councils take to decide a planning application?

The statutory clock says 8 weeks for most applications, but the official statistics tell a very different story. Here is what really happens, and how to time your approach to the work.

The short answer

Most planning applications in England carry a statutory determination period of 8 weeks. Major schemes get 13 weeks, and anything needing an Environmental Impact Assessment gets 16 weeks. Those are the legal limits within which a local planning authority is supposed to decide.

In practice, very few decisions land inside those limits. In the official figures for July to September 2025, only 41% of minor applications were decided within the statutory 8 weeks, and only 19% of major applications were decided within the statutory 13 weeks. The headline performance numbers councils report (around 88% to 90% on time) only look good because they include extensions of time agreed in writing with the applicant.

For anyone in the construction supply chain, the practical takeaway is simple. The statutory clock tells you when you are first allowed to chase a council. It does not tell you when the job will actually be approved. If you plan your pipeline around 8 weeks, you will be wrong most of the time.

The statutory determination periods, and where they come from

The time limits are set out in article 34 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, usually shortened to the DMPO 2015. The clock starts from the date the application is validated, not the date it is submitted. Validation means the council has confirmed the application is complete with the right forms, drawings, fee and supporting documents.

There are four periods to know:

• 8 weeks for most applications, including householder extensions, minor commercial works, changes of use and small residential schemes.
• 13 weeks for major development, broadly 10 or more dwellings, sites of 0.5 hectares or more, or floorspace of 1,000 square metres or more.
• 10 weeks for technical details consent and certain public service infrastructure applications, a category added from 1 August 2021.
• 16 weeks where the application is subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment, which captures the largest and most sensitive schemes.

These are maximums, not targets

It is worth being precise about what the statutory period is. It is the maximum time the authority has to determine a valid application, unless you agree otherwise in writing. It is not an internal target the case officer is working towards, and it is not a promise that simpler applications will be quicker.

If the council has not decided by the end of the statutory period, and no written extension has been agreed, the applicant gains a right of appeal to the Secretary of State against non-determination. Few small applicants use this, because a non-determination appeal hands the decision to the Planning Inspectorate and usually takes far longer than simply waiting for the council. But the right exists, and it is the reason councils try hard to agree extensions rather than let the clock run out.

There is a second backstop called the planning guarantee. Government policy is that no application should spend more than a year with decision-makers including any appeal, so major applications are expected to be decided within 26 weeks and non-major applications within 16 weeks. If no decision is made within those periods, 26 weeks for major development or 16 weeks for non-major development, and no longer period has been agreed in writing, the planning application fee must be refunded to the applicant.

Why real decisions run longer than the headline period

The gap between the 8-week statutory period and what actually happens is filled almost entirely by one mechanism: the extension of time agreement. This is a written agreement between the applicant and the council that the application will be determined within a longer, agreed period. Once signed, the council still counts the decision as on time even though it has blown through the statutory limit.

The scale of this is striking. In July to September 2025, 41% of all planning application decisions involved a performance agreement, a term the official statistics use to cover extensions of time, planning performance agreements and EIA cases. For major applications the figure was 78%, for minors 52%, and for other applications 35%. In other words, most major schemes are now decided under an agreed extension rather than within the statutory 13 weeks.

There are legitimate reasons for this. Consultees such as highways, drainage, ecology and heritage bodies often need more than the statutory window to respond. Amended plans get submitted mid-application. Section 106 agreements on larger schemes take time to negotiate. But the effect on your planning is the same: a validated application is not a decision date, and the more significant the scheme, the longer the real timeline tends to be.

The figures above come from the government's quarterly planning application statistics, which cover all 76,200 decisions made by district-level authorities in that quarter. They are the most reliable national picture of how long planning actually takes, and we have linked the release in the sources below.

Decision times vary enormously by council

National averages hide a lot. Two neighbouring authorities can have very different processing speeds depending on staffing, backlog, the mix of applications they receive and how aggressively they push for extensions of time. A householder extension might be decided in five weeks in one borough and twelve in the next, with no change in the rules.

That variation matters if you work across a region rather than a single patch. A roofer, groundworker or M&E contractor bidding for work in several council areas is effectively dealing with several different clocks. Knowing which authorities tend to move quickly, and which routinely rely on extensions, lets you sequence your outreach so you are talking to the right project at the right moment.

SiteLens tracks live applications council by council, so you can see what is moving where. You can browse activity on individual authority pages such as Birmingham, Lambeth or Amber Valley, or see the full list of more than 320 live councils on the councils directory.

How tracking validation-to-decision changes your timing

For the supply chain, the single most useful date on an application is not the decision date. It is the validation date, because that is when the project is real, the drawings are fixed enough to price, and the design team is engaged. From validation you have a known window before any work starts, and you can use it.

If you wait until a scheme shows as approved before you make contact, you are arriving at the same time as everyone else who watches decision lists. By then the main contractor may already be appointed and the supply chain may already be lined up. The opportunity for most trades and suppliers sits between validation and decision, while the team is still being assembled.

Tracking the validation-to-decision window does two things. It tells you which projects are live and worth a conversation now, and it tells you roughly how long you have before the decision concentrates competition. A major scheme under an extension of time gives you months of runway. An 8-week householder application gives you weeks. Reading that difference is the difference between a warm introduction and a cold pitch.

Putting it into practice with SiteLens

SiteLens watches every new UK planning application across more than 320 councils, updated daily, and classifies each one by trade, project type and an estimated value band using AI. Instead of reading raw council registers, you get a filtered daily email of the applications that match your trade and your area, with the validation date front and centre so you can judge the timing.

Because the platform records when an application was validated and tracks it through to decision, you can spot major schemes early, watch them through their extension period, and time your approach to the project rather than to the council's slow decision list. You can compare how SiteLens differs from incumbent data services on our Glenigan comparison, and see the alerting and classification detail on the features page.

The free tier lets you start watching applications today. Pro is £39 a month, or £29 a month billed annually, and adds unlimited application views, full classification and daily trade-and-area alerts. You can sign up here and have your first filtered alerts arriving the next working day.

Key dates to remember

If you take nothing else from this guide, hold on to these numbers. They are the framework every UK planning timeline sits inside.

• 8 weeks: statutory period for most applications, from validation.
• 13 weeks: statutory period for major development.
• 16 weeks: statutory period where an Environmental Impact Assessment is required.
• 26 weeks (major) and 16 weeks (non-major): the planning guarantee backstop, with a fee refund where no decision is made in those periods unless a longer period is agreed in writing.
• Extension of time: a written agreement that lengthens the deadline, and the reason most decisions count as on time despite running past the statutory period.

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