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Methodology

Sources and method

How the council planning figures are built, what each measure means, and how to reuse them. Figures run to June 2026.

Sources

Every figure comes from published government data. We check for new releases each week and refresh when one appears.

What each measure means

Decisions

Householder applications decided by the council over the last four quarters. Householder applications cover work to an existing house, such as extensions, loft conversions and garages. New dwellings and changes of use are not included.

Granted

The share of those decisions that granted permission, with or without conditions.

Within 8 weeks, no extension

The share of decisions made within the statutory 8 weeks without any extension of time. This is the figure we rank councils on for speed.

Extension of time

The share of decisions made under an extension of time: a new deadline agreed between the council and the applicant, usually beyond 8 weeks. We also report how many of these were then decided by the agreed date.

Appeals allowed

Of householder appeals the Planning Inspectorate decided in the same four quarters, the share it allowed. We count appeals whose development type is householder, through either the householder appeal service or the full planning appeal route, with an outcome of allowed, dismissed or split. The wait is the median time from the appeal start date to the decision.

Decisions per 1,000 residents

The map can show how many householder applications each authority decided in the year, per 1,000 residents. Population comes from ONS mid-2024 estimates for small areas (LSOAs), added up by the planning authority each small area's population centre falls in. A national park's residents therefore count towards the park, which decides their applications, not the council around it. Hartlepool and Middlesbrough development corporations have no published boundary, so they appear in the table but not on the map.

Barnsley and Sheffield boundaries are drawn from planning.data.gov.uk's published outlines, which may not yet reflect the small 2024 boundary change between the two councils.

Why extensions of time are shown separately

A decision made under an agreed extension of time counts as on time in the government's own performance measure, even when it takes months. In the year to June 2026, 32.3% of householder decisions in England were made this way. Folding them into an "on time" figure hides how long homeowners actually wait, so we report the share decided within 8 weeks with no extension, and the extension share alongside it.

The time bands in the source data (8 to 13 weeks, and so on) cover only decisions made without an extension. The share taking over 26 weeks therefore understates long waits.

Ranking and council changes

Councils are ranked only when they made 100 or more householder decisions in the last four quarters. Below that, a few decisions swing the percentages too far for a fair comparison, so those councils appear in the table without a rank. Ties share a rank.

Several councils have merged since 2019, such as North Yorkshire in 2023. A merged council's figures start when it first reported. We do not add together the councils it replaced. The series begins in 2008, the first year the source splits decisions by time taken.

More on each council page

Each council page also carries the measures below. Every figure names its source and period on the page.

Appeals overturned

The share of a council's householder refusals later overturned at appeal. Refusals come from MHCLG table PS2 and allowed appeals from the Planning Inspectorate casework database, both over the same five years (July 2021 to June 2026). A council created in a reorganisation, such as a 2023 unitary, starts from its first quarter of PS2 figures, not from the start of the window. A split decision counts as half an allowed appeal, because the appeal succeeded only in part. The figure is approximate: an appeal decided in the window can relate to a refusal made before it. Councils with fewer than 20 refusals in the window show no rate.

Larger home extension prior approvals

Prior approval applications for larger single-storey rear extensions, from MHCLG table PDR 1, over up to four consecutive quarters (July 2025 to June 2026). Earlier quarters come from the UK Government Web Archive. Each quarter is kept as first published, because MHCLG does not republish earlier quarters, and a period that includes a quarter MHCLG marks as provisional is shown as provisional. The refusal rate is refusals as a share of cases granted or refused: cases where prior approval not required was the outcome are left out, because the council did not rule on the extension's impact. Councils with fewer than 10 decided cases show no rate. The larger home extension scheme is not available in conservation areas, National Landscapes, national parks, the Broads or World Heritage Sites, so a council's figure covers only homes outside those areas. Park authorities therefore have no figure, and development corporations with no cases show none.

Enforcement notices

Planning enforcement notices issued in the year, from MHCLG table P130, for all types of development, not only householder work. A notice count measures council action rather than how much unauthorised building takes place. We divide by homes from the VOA Council Tax stock of properties to give notices per 1,000 homes. Councils with fewer than 10,000 homes, such as the City of London, are left out of ranks and the England median because a handful of notices swings their rate. The per-home rate is not available for national park authorities or development corporations, whose areas are not council tax areas, though their notice counts are shown.

Protected areas

Conservation areas and Article 4 direction areas each council has published to planning.data.gov.uk (the conservation-area and article-4-direction-area datasets). We count distinct named areas, because one area is often published as several shapes. Records supplied by Historic England are not credited to a council. Where a page says a council has not published its boundaries, the council has not sent that dataset to the national planning data service, so the count may be incomplete or missing. A council showing no Article 4 data may still have Article 4 directions in force, so check with the council before relying on permitted development rights. Records still held under a former council abolished in a reorganisation are not credited to the council that replaced it.

Builders

Local business units in 12 building trades from ONS UK Business Counts, via Nomis: construction of domestic buildings (SIC 41202), electrical installation (SIC 43210), plumbing, heat and air-conditioning installation (SIC 43220), other construction installation (SIC 43290), plastering (SIC 43310), joinery installation (SIC 43320), floor and wall covering (SIC 43330), painting (SIC 43341), glazing (SIC 43342), other building completion and finishing (SIC 43390), roofing (SIC 43910) and other specialised construction work (SIC 43999). Counts are of local units, so a business with several sites counts once for each site; council pages call them firms. Only VAT or PAYE registered firms are counted, so unregistered sole traders are missing, and ONS counts are rounded to the nearest 5. Read the figure as a relative index for comparing councils. We divide by homes from the VOA Council Tax stock to give firms per 1,000 homes. Councils with fewer than 10,000 homes are left out of ranks and the England median. The figure is not available for national park authorities or development corporations, which do not match council areas.

Neighbouring councils

Councils listed as neighbours share a boundary on our map of planning authorities. National parks are included, so a council can list a park it borders and a park lists the councils around it. Hartlepool and Middlesbrough development corporations have no published boundary, so they have no neighbours listed.

Property prices and energy performance

Each council and national park page shows sale prices alongside energy performance. We match HM Land Registry Price Paid sales to the Energy Performance Certificate in force at the time of sale (MHCLG), which gives each sale a floor area and an energy rating. Homes are placed in councils and national parks using the ONS National Statistics UPRN Lookup. Checked against HM Land Registry's own sale-to-property lookup, our matching agrees on 99.8% of the sales both cover.

Price per m² and homes rated A to C

Medians across standard sales in the last three years, and the share of those homes whose certificate at sale was rated A to C. The stock figure uses each home's latest certificate. Areas with fewer than 30 sales are not shown.

Value added by extending

Houses that sold twice (second sale 2016 onwards), with floor area up by at least 15 m² and a tenth between the sales. Each one's price growth is compared with the median for similar houses in the same council, of the same type and sold in the same years, whose floor area and energy score barely changed. The difference, divided by the floor area added, is the value per m². Shown where 50 or more houses qualify.

Energy upgrade uplift

The same comparison for houses whose energy efficiency score rose by 5 points or more with no change in floor area. It includes any other work done at the same time, so treat it as the premium for an upgraded home rather than for insulation alone.

All figures are medians for groups of homes. They describe past sales, not the value of any one property. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Energy Performance Certificate data from MHCLG, Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026.

Address check

The address check looks up one postcode at a time. We place the postcode centre from the ONS postcode directory (via postcodes.io), then ask each source below about that point. A postcode can cover several homes, so a boundary that passes close to yours may not show. Each answer on the page names its source and how precise it is.

Planning designations

Conservation areas, Article 4 direction areas, tree preservation zones, green belt and National Landscapes at the postcode centre, from planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG). These layers come from what each council has sent to the national planning data service. Where a council has not published a dataset, the check says unknown rather than no, and a council's own map remains the final word on a boundary.

Listed buildings

Listed buildings within about 50 metres of the postcode centre, from Historic England's list as published on planning.data.gov.uk. This tells you listed buildings are nearby. It does not tell you whether your own home is listed: search the National Heritage List for England for that.

Flood zone

The Environment Agency's Flood Map for Planning, which covers flooding from rivers and the sea. The zones ignore flood defences, because planning policy assesses the land itself. Surface water flooding is mapped separately and is not part of this check.

Radon

The indicative atlas of radon from the British Geological Survey and UK Health Security Agency. It gives the highest radon potential found anywhere in the 1 km grid square around the postcode, so the result describes the square, not your house. Building control decides the protection an extension needs, usually from an address-level radon report.

Ground hazards

BGS GeoSure national estimates for the 5 km hexagon around the postcode: shrink-swell clay, landslides, compressible ground, collapsible ground, running sand and soluble rocks. These are area estimates for comparison. A site investigation tells you what is under your plot.

Coal mining

Whether the postcode centre falls in the coalfield area mapped by the Coal Authority (now the Mining Remediation Authority), and whether that part carries a higher development risk. We report only that, and point you to a mining report (CON29M) for detail about the ground.

Where we could not tell, the page says unknown, for example when a council has not published a dataset. Where a source failed or timed out, it says we couldn't check right now. Neither is ever shown as a no.

Your postcode goes to our lookup and to postcodes.io, which finds its centre; the other sources receive only that centre point. It never appears in the page address, and our analytics record only the kind of result and which checks were flagged. Like any web request, it appears briefly in our host's request logs, and each postcode's result is cached for about a week so repeat checks are quick.

Reuse and citation

The source data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and you are welcome to reuse our tables and charts on the same terms. Please cite:

buildwiz.uk council planning statistics, year to June 2026. https://buildwiz.uk/planning/councils

The full table is available as a CSV download. Journalists with questions about the data can contact us.

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