Planning decisions pile up on day 56 of the eight-week window
Householder decisions by day since validation. 25 English councils, 106,988 decisions, January 2020 onward. A balanced validation sample across six English regions, not a national census. Source: PlanningLens.
The day after
The drop is abrupt. Whatever is driving the concentration on day 56, very little of it carries into day 57. Across days 49 to 54 these councils issued 3,352 householder decisions a day. Across days 57 to 62 they issued 1,047 a day.
Two checks on the pattern
Why day 56
The period is set by article 34 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015. Major development runs to 13 weeks, technical details consent and public service infrastructure to 10, and cases requiring an Environmental Impact Assessment to 16.
It is a standard, not an absolute. A council and an applicant can agree an extension of time in writing under the same article, which moves the operative deadline for that case. Once the period expires without a decision or an agreed extension, the applicant gains a right of appeal for non-determination. Where a non-major case runs on without an extension, government policy under the planning guarantee is that it should still be decided within 16 weeks.
Performance against the eight-week standard is also the measure by which central government publishes council speed data.
Every council in the sample
Decisions on day 56 relative to the average of days 54, 55, 57 and 58. Sorted for readability, not a ranking. Havering is greyed and clipped: its 34.0 rests on only 435 decisions. Source: PlanningLens.
Every council clears the 2x floor. The weakest is Sandwell at 2.69, the median council is 4.70, and three councils exceed 10. That replication across independent councils and source systems is what makes the pattern hard to attribute to any single authority's record keeping.
Same speed, different answers
Approval rates across that league run from 70.15% to 95.95%. For the 80 councils that also publish a typical decision time, those times run from 5.4 to 9.6 weeks, and 28 of the 80 report exactly 8.0. The rank correlation between a council's approval rate and its decision time is -0.13, which at that sample size is indistinguishable from none.
Councils converge on timing and diverge on answers. How long a council takes tells you very little about whether it will say yes. The full picture on each sits on how long planning permission takes and the council approval rankings.
How we did it
25 English councils · 106,988 householder decisions · January 2020 onward · 2,605 misleading householder records excluded · canonical PlanningLens timing pipeline
Full replication notes
Sample. Selected as a balanced validation sample rather than at random: London 6, East 4, Midlands 4, North 4, South East 4, South West 3. Metropolitan authorities, unitaries and districts, cohorts from 323 to 10,674 decisions, and both London Datahub and non-Datahub source systems.
Measurement. Days from validation to decision, computed with the same code PlanningLens uses for its published council decision-time figures. Every council was reconciled against its own published figure before inclusion and all 25 matched to within 0.04 weeks. The statutory period begins the day after a valid application is received, so a measured gap of exactly 56 days is a decision issued on the final day of the period rather than one day beyond it.
Eligibility. Householder applications only, because eight weeks applies to them regardless of scale. Prior approval and permitted development routes were excluded, as they run their own 56 and 42 day clocks. Full, outline and reserved matters were excluded because major and minor status is not recorded in the source data and the period differs between them. Works to trees run six-week and 28-day regimes. Non-material amendments, discharge and variation of conditions, screening opinions and consultations were excluded, as were records with no usable application type.
For anyone replicating this. 2,605 rows carrying the word householder in their application type were excluded because they are not householder planning applications: 2,424 different statutory routes, 110 administrative, 71 certificate cases. Twelve of the 25 councils label a prior approval or permitted development route as a form of householder application. Two further councils, Leeds and York, were dropped entirely because their whole householder cohort consisted of such routes. Naive text matching on the word householder contaminates the cohort, and in two councils it would have replaced it completely. Every excluded label is named in the dataset.
Control. Prior approval cases in the same councils were analysed separately and show their own clustering at day 42 and day 56, consistent with their own clocks.
Approval context. Drawn from the PlanningLens validated England league of 91 councils on a frozen substantive basis from January 2020, with typical decision times for 80 of them. A different cohort from the deadline analysis; the two are never combined.
Limitations. This is a validation sample, not a census of England, and the 21.1% figure describes this sample. The analysis covers householder applications and does not establish the same pattern for major applications, which run a different clock. The data shows when decisions were issued, not why, and nothing here establishes intent on the part of any council or officer. Eight further councils considered for the sample carried no householder label at all, and three fell below the 200-decision floor; all are named in the dataset. A small number of records in any store carry dates that cannot be parsed and are excluded from measurement rather than estimated.
Data and sources
The dataset covers all 25 councils in the sample and the 10 considered and excluded, with daily counts around the deadline, spike ratios, typical decision times, data currency and exclusion reasons.
- Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, article 34
- Determining a planning application, Planning Practice Guidance
Questions
Is there a legal deadline of 56 days?
The determination period for most householder applications is eight weeks, which is 56 days. It is set by article 34 of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015. It is not absolute: a council and an applicant can agree an extension of time in writing, which changes the operative deadline for that case.
Does this mean councils sit on applications until the last day?
The data does not show that. It shows that decisions cluster strongly at the end of the standard period. Why they cluster there is not something these figures can answer.
What happens if a council misses the deadline?
The applicant gains a right of appeal on the grounds of non-determination. In practice many cases run past eight weeks under an agreed extension. Where no extension is agreed, government policy under the planning guarantee is that a non-major application should still be decided within 16 weeks.
Is 21.1% the figure for England?
No. It is the figure for this 25-council validation sample. PlanningLens has not measured every English council for this pattern.
Which councils were included?
All 25 are named in the dataset, along with the 10 that were considered and excluded and the reason in each case.