The council's process
The months nobody explains.
This is the part of planning where people lose their nerve: a long silence with no way to tell whether something has gone wrong or whether that is simply what eight weeks feels like. Here is what is happening, and who is doing it.
Stages
What each stage means
01
Days, sometimes weeks
Validated
The council checks the application is complete against its own list and issues a reference. This is the moment the statutory clock starts, not the day you submitted. Your planner cannot record this stage without the council's reference, because a validated application with no reference is a claim nobody can check on a case whose owner is about to be told a clock has started.
02
21 days, usually
Consultation
Neighbours are notified, a site notice may go up, and statutory consultees are asked. Anyone can comment. Objections are not votes, and an officer weighs them against policy rather than counting them.
03
The bulk of the time
Assessment
The case officer visits, reads the documents, weighs the responses, and writes a report recommending approval or refusal. Most applications are decided by officers under delegated powers.
04
Adds four to eight weeks
Committee, sometimes
A minority go to a planning committee of elected members. It happens on larger schemes, where an officer recommendation is contested, or where a councillor calls it in.
05
The notice arrives
Decided
Granted, refused, or split. The notice carries the conditions and the reasons, and both matter: conditions are obligations you must discharge before or during the build, and reasons are the material for an appeal.
How long
The statutory period, and the real one
A council may ask for an extension of time, and most do at some point. The statutory period is the floor, not the forecast.
| Application | Statutory | In practice |
|---|---|---|
| Householder | 8 weeks | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Minor | 13 weeks | 13 to 20 weeks |
| Major | 16 weeks | 16 to 30 weeks |
| Appeal | No statutory period | 12 to 20 weeks |
Your own council’s average is on its page, along with the share of applications it decides inside the period. Look yours up.
Chasing
Who chases whom
This is where most people's experience of planning actually goes wrong, so it is worth being specific.
Your chartered planner is the point of contact with the case officer. When the officer has a question, it comes to them and they answer it. When the officer wants an amendment, they prepare it. You are told what was asked and what was said, on your timeline, rather than being forwarded a thread to interpret.
Council correspondence lands on your case file automatically, because each case has its own address carrying its reference. Anything from an address we do not recognise for that council is held for a person to read rather than discarded, because a silently dropped council email is the worst outcome available: the council believes it has replied, you see nothing, and nothing anywhere records that it arrived.
You get an email within the hour when the stage you are on changes, and a message if the case has simply gone quiet, which is often the honest status and almost never the one people are given.
If it is granted
Permission is not the end of the paperwork
Most permissions carry conditions, and some must be discharged before you start. Building before clearing a pre-commencement condition can mean the permission was never lawfully implemented, which is the most expensive administrative mistake available in this system. A discharge of conditions application is a householder-tier case at £499.
If something small changes on site, a non-material amendment can adjust an existing permission without a fresh application, so long as the change genuinely is non-material. That test is stricter than most people expect.
The approved plans often arrive days after the notice, sometimes by post. Your case reports them as outstanding until they land, rather than pretending the file is complete.
If it is refused
A refusal is not the end either.
It comes with reasons, and the reasons are the material for the next step.
You can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. Written representations cost £799 through Wren, and the Inspectorate itself charges nothing. Deadlines are strict and they differ by application type: twelve weeks for a householder application, eight for advertisements, six months for most others, and no statutory deadline on a refused certificate of lawfulness.
Sometimes the better answer is to amend and resubmit rather than to appeal, and sometimes the reasons for refusal are ones no appeal will get past. Your planner will tell you which, and will say so plainly if an appeal is not worth your money.
Start here
See how your council actually performs.
Approval rate, average weeks to a decision, and the share decided inside the statutory period. Free, for every authority in the country.