Hardest and Easiest Councils for Planning Permission

Methodology: Rankings cover 777,685 substantive development-control decisions dated 1 January 2020 to present, across the 91 councils in England that meet our published eligibility rules. Approval rate = approved (including conditional) / substantive decisions decided. Ranking figures cover substantive development-control decisions dated 1 January 2020 to present. They are not the same as a council's all-time approval rate, which uses a different denominator. The headline figure (83.06%, as of September 2026) is decision-weighted across the ranked councils. The 85.35% figure quoted as the typical council is the unweighted average of each council’s own rate. The league is England only: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland sit outside it until equivalent coverage validation exists, which is a limit on what we can verify rather than a judgement about their data. Councils failing a coverage, volume, refusal-capture or window-continuity rule are listed below with the reason. Correction (12 September 2026): how we calculate the planning approval rate Data sourced from council planning portals. See our full methodology →