Original analysis drawn from 3,770,000+ real planning decisions across 304 UK planning authorities. Each briefing is published here in full, with a designed PDF for print and citation.
The statutory answer is eight weeks. The measured answer, from millions of council portal records, is longer almost everywhere. Decision times for every ranked UK council and project type, with league tables, the trend since 2019 and the full method. Every figure regenerates with the data.
England is deciding nearly twice as many HMO applications as four years ago and refusing a sharply rising share of them. Where the squeeze bites, and what the data does and does not show about the link everyone assumes.
How a cathedral city became one of the slowest places in England to extend a home — and where, inside it, applications are most likely to be refused.