What the planning data actually shows

For planning consultants and agents researching a council, a site or an officer before advising a client. Every figure on this page is measured from 1,448,670 planning applications across 312 councils with complete history from January 2023 — not estimated, and not a national average dressed up as local knowledge.

The national average is useless to you

Across the 209 councils with at least 2,000 decided applications, the approval rate runs from 71.36% (Elmbridge) to 99.09% (City of London) — 27.7 percentage points apart. The middle of the pack (Rushcliffe) sits at 88.88%.

71.36%
Lowest council approval rate
99.09%
Highest
31–295
Median days to a decision, by council
29.8%
Planning Inspectorate appeals allowed

A decision that takes 31 days in one authority takes 295 in another. Quoting a client a national figure for either is guesswork — the number that matters is the one for the council, the application type and the officer actually in front of you.

If it's refused

Of 167,703 decided Planning Inspectorate appeals, 49,930 were allowed and 109,685 dismissed — roughly 29.8% succeed. Undecided cases are excluded from that denominator; an appeal still in progress is not a dismissal.

Planning Inspectorate cases only. Council-recorded appeals are held too, but they overlap with these and can't be reliably deduplicated, so mixing the two would inflate any rate you calculated.

Questions this answers

Each of these is a lookup against the records, not a generated opinion.

"What has Rushcliffe actually approved for a rear extension in the last two years?"

Decided applications filtered by council, type and date — with the description of each, so you can see what was and wasn't acceptable rather than just the count.

"What's the full planning history of this address?"

Every application at the same site, plus appeals and enforcement matched to it. Matching is deterministic and labelled — a renamed or renumbered property will not match, so an empty result is weak evidence, not proof nothing happened there.

"How long is a decision realistically going to take here?"

Median and average decision days for that council, measured from its own decided applications.

"Is this postcode in a conservation area or under an Article 4 direction?"

12,119 conservation areas and 6,890 Article 4 directions from 365 publishing bodies (England). Tested against the postcode centroid, so verify a specific property against the council's own map before relying on it.

"What's this case officer's record on this kind of application?"

Approval and refusal rates per officer, and the mix of application types they handle — where the council publishes officer names. Coverage varies; the per-council page says which fields exist.

"How does this agent's approval rate compare?"

232,696 planning agents, with application counts, approval rates and the councils they work across.

What it can't tell you

Worth knowing before you rely on it in front of a client. None of this is hidden in the responses either — every one carries the caveat with it.

It doesn't read the documents. We index the applications, not the drawings, officer reports or consultation responses attached to them. It will tell you an application exists, what it was for and what happened to it — not what the officer wrote in their report.
Most appeals don't link to an application. Only about 10.4% of Planning Inspectorate cases can be tied to a specific application in the data — the rest match to a property, or not at all. "No appeal found" is therefore weak evidence, never proof there wasn't one.
Enforcement is patchy by council. 153 of the 390 councils we hold publish enforcement notices at all. Where a council doesn't, an empty result means we have no data — not that there have been no breaches.
Councils fill in different fields. Some publish no received date; some no case officer. The coverage pages measure exactly which fields each council populates, so you can check before you build an argument on one.
It isn't planning advice. It's the public record, retrieved quickly and honestly labelled. The judgement stays yours, and anything decision-critical should be checked against the council's own record — every result links back to it.

How you'd actually use it

Two ways in, both on the same free allowance. Neither needs you to be a developer.

Try it on a council you know well.
That's the honest test — look up somewhere whose planning history you can already check, and see whether it matches. Free: 500 lookups a month, no card.
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