Planning appeal timescales: how long do you have to appeal?

 

If the council has turned your application down, you do not have forever to do something about it. Appeal timescales are critical. Every kind of application carries its own appeal deadline, and they are nothing like each other. Some give you six months. Some give you twelve weeks. A few give you twenty eight days.

Miss it and, for most routes, that is the end of the matter. The Planning Inspectorate will not accept a late ordinary planning appeal simply because there is a good explanation. Some specialist regimes are different: the rules for Tree Preservation Order appeals, high hedges, advertisement consent and listed building consent contain powers to accept an appeal outside the normal period. Those are discretionary safety nets rather than rights, so never plan around them. Find the deadline for your particular appeal before you do anything else.

This page sets out the appeal timescale for each kind of application, when the clock starts running, and the one situation where a far shorter deadline can override everything else.

 

Planning appeal timescales for each type of application

 

The period you get depends on what you applied for. This list is comprehensive and should cover most situations.

• 28 days for an appeal about works to trees covered by Tree Preservation Orders. Current government material is inconsistent about whether the trigger is the date on the decision notice, notification or receipt, so use the date printed on the notice as the safe working date. The Secretary of State can allow longer: see tree preservation order appeal
• Before the date an enforcement notice takes effect, which is a date the notice itself has to state
• 28 days from the day a high hedges remedial notice is issued, though the appeal authority can allow you longer: see high hedges appeal
• 8 weeks from when you receive the council’s decision, not from the date printed on it, for Advertisement Consent, or 8 weeks from the expiry of the council’s period if they failed to decide, and the Secretary of State can allow longer. The current PINS procedural guide table uses the date on the decision notice instead, so see our advertisement consent appeal page for why we follow the legislation’s receipt-based wording
• Normally no statutory deadline for an ordinary section 191 or section 192 lawful development certificate appeal, although the Planning Inspectorate says it expects a timely appeal, usually within six months; a listed building lawful development certificate is different and has a six-month deadline: see lawful development certificate appeal
• 12 weeks from the date on the decision notice for refusal of a householder application, meaning extensions, alterations, garages, swimming pools, walls, fences, vehicular access, porches and satellite dishes
• 12 weeks from the date on the decision notice for refusal of a minor commercial application such as a shop front, which does not include change of use, a change to the number of units, development not wholly on the ground floor, or anything that would increase the gross internal area
• 6 months to object to conditions imposed on a householder or minor commercial permission, which is not the 12 week deadline, as that one applies to refusals only
• 6 months from the expiry of the council’s determination period where they failed to decide a householder or minor commercial application
• 6 months from the date on the decision notice for Listed Building Consent, and the Secretary of State can allow longer: see listed building consent appeal
• 6 months from the date on the decision for a permission in principle
• 6 months for a Listed Building Certificate of Lawfulness, the section 26H certificate
• 12 weeks from the date on the decision notice for refusal of prior approval where the underlying application counts as a householder application, such as prior approval for a larger single-storey rear extension
• 6 months for most other refusals of prior approval, or from the date the prior approval decision should have been made where the appeal is for non-determination
• 6 months from refusal of a Biodiversity Gain Plan, or 6 months from the date the council should have decided the plan where it failed to determine it
• 6 months from the date on the decision notice, or from the date the decision should have been issued, for all other applications
• Before the effective date on a discontinuance notice
• There is no appeal at all against a decision on a non material amendment under section 96A

 

The enforcement notice trap

 

This is the one that catches people, and it can cut your deadline to a fraction of what you were expecting.

If an enforcement notice has been served on the same or very similar development, a much shorter 28 day deadline can override every period listed above. That applies where the notice was served before the decision, and not more than two years before the application was made, and it also applies where the notice was served afterwards and lands close to your appeal deadline.

So if you are holding both a refusal and an enforcement notice, do not work from the six month figure. Take advice straight away, because the clock may be far shorter than you think and it may already be running.

 

When the appeal timescale starts

 

For ordinary planning refusals, householder refusals, minor commercial refusals and listed building consent refusals, work from the statutory trigger stated for that appeal, which is generally the date on the decision notice. Do not apply that sentence to every specialist regime: Tree Preservation Order guidance currently uses more than one formulation, advertisement consent uses receipt-based statutory wording, and high hedges and discontinuance notices have their own triggers. Check the specific line for your appeal rather than using one generic date.

Where the council never issued a decision at all, the clock runs instead from the expiry of the period they had to determine the application. That is the route known as a non-determination appeal, and the timing works differently because there is no decision notice to count from.

Being inside the deadline is not the same as posting something on the last day. The Inspectorate has to have received the appeal form and the essential supporting documents before the period expires. Leave yourself room.

 

The date that decides which rules apply to you

 

There is a second date that matters just as much as your deadline, and it is easy to get the wrong one.

The appeal system changed on 1st April 2026. For an ordinary section 78 appeal, which version applies is decided by the date the application was made, not the date you appeal. So an application made in March 2026 and refused in July still runs under the old rules, even though you are appealing long after the change. Advertisement consent appeals are the exception: for those, the 2026 written-representations trigger is the date the application was determined, not the date it was made.

That distinction affects how your appeal will be handled rather than how long you have to lodge it, and it is explained in full on our page about written representations appeals.

 

Do not confuse this with the council’s own timescales

 

The periods on this page are about appealing. They are nothing to do with how long the council gets to decide your application in the first place, which is a separate set of periods entirely. If that is what you are after, see our guide to planning application timescales.

 

What an appeal costs

 

There is no fee to make a planning appeal. Every party is expected to meet its own expenses, so there is nothing to pay the Planning Inspectorate for handling it.

That does not make an appeal free. If you use a planning consultant or a solicitor you pay them, and in some circumstances costs can be awarded against a party that has behaved unreasonably, which is covered on our page about an award of costs in an appeal. The fee you paid the council for the original application is a separate matter, so see our guide to planning fees for what an application costs.

 

If you have already missed the deadline

 

For an ordinary section 78 planning appeal, do not assume there is any route around a missed statutory deadline. In many cases the practical answer is that the appeal right has gone and a fresh application is needed. Specialist regimes are different: as noted above, Tree Preservation Order, high hedge, advertisement consent and listed building consent appeals contain discretionary powers to accept a later appeal. If one of those applies, the deadline should still be treated as real, but a late appeal is not automatically hopeless.

What you can usually do instead is submit a fresh application. That is often the better route anyway, particularly if changing the scheme would deal with the council’s reasons for refusal, because an appeal is not normally a reliable route for introducing a revised scheme. A new application starts a new decision, and a new decision carries a new right of appeal. For how to weigh that choice, see our guide to what to do when a planning application is refused.

The one route that is not governed by these deadlines is a challenge in the High Court, which runs on its own much shorter clock and is not an alternative to appealing. See our page on judicial review and section 288 challenges before assuming it is available to you.

For how the appeal itself is then handled, see our guide to planning appeals.

See also our guide to the types of planning application.

 

 

Relevant legislation

 

Links below go to legislation.gov.uk. Always check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each provision, because amendments are often listed there before they are written into the text.

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 78, the right of appeal against refusal, conditions or non-determination
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 174, appeal against an enforcement notice
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, section 20, the right of appeal on listed building consent
• Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 (SI 2015/595), the appeal deadlines, and the definitions of householder and minor commercial development

Other Planning Appeal Sections

 

Planning Appeal Timescales Page Updated: 29th August 2026