Planning applications & appeals

 

Almost everything people find difficult about planning comes down to three questions: do I need permission, which application do I make, and what happens next? This page answers the first and the third. For the second, we have a guide to every type of planning application in England.

 

 

What is a planning application?

 

Planning permission is required for development. That is the rule, and it comes from section 57 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Development means building, engineering, mining or other operations on land, or a material change in the use of land or buildings.

A planning application asks the local planning authority to grant that permission. The council considers it, consults neighbours and statutory bodies, and issues a decision notice granting permission, granting it with conditions, or refusing.

What it is not is a judgement about whether your scheme is a good idea. Planning is a policy-led system, not a taste-led one, which is why so many objections fail, and why so many unloved schemes are approved.

 

 

Do you need permission at all?

 

Start here, because the cheapest application is the one you never make. A great deal of development is already granted planning permission by the General Permitted Development Order, subject to class-specific conditions, limitations and prior approval requirements. Some rights are restricted in conservation areas, National Parks and other protected areas, listed buildings can engage separate listed building controls, and an Article 4 direction only removes the permitted development rights it actually specifies.

Our guide to permitted development is the place to start. And if you want the answer in writing rather than in hope, a certificate of lawfulness of proposed use puts it beyond argument before you build.

Be aware that a number of those rights are not free-standing. They are granted on terms, and the work cannot begin until the council has checked specified matters first. That check is a prior approval, and missing it is one of the more common ways a permitted development scheme comes unstuck.

Before any of that, you may want to sound the council out. Pre-application advice is optional and usually chargeable, and it binds nobody, but it can be worth having where a proposal is unusual or the site is constrained.

 

 

Which planning application do you need?

 

There is no such thing as “a planning application”, as there are around twenty types in England, and choosing the wrong one costs you weeks, because the council will simply invalidate it.

The common ones are the householder application for works to your own house, full planning permission for everything else, and outline permission where you want to test the principle before paying for a design.

Our guide to the types of planning application lists every one, with a line on when to use it. This includes specialist routes such as a Crown development application for nationally important development by or on behalf of the Crown. If you are not sure, start there.

 

 

What does a planning application cost?

 

A fee is payable on most applications, and it varies with the type and scale of development, so see our guide to planning fees in England. A few consents carry no fee at all: listed building consent and scheduled monument consent among them.

The fee is rarely the real cost. That sits in the supporting material: drawings, a design and access statement where required, a planning statement where appropriate, and whatever technical reports the site demands: flood risk, ecology, heritage, transport, drainage. Under-spending there is a false economy, and never more so than since 1st April 2026, when the appeal rules changed. You can no longer rescue a refused application by producing at appeal the report you should have submitted in the first place.

See our guides to required drawings and block, site and location plans for what you actually need.

 

 

How long does a planning application take?

 

The council must determine a valid application within:

• 8 weeks for a standard application
• 13 weeks for major development
• 16 weeks where an environmental impact assessment is required

Any of those can be extended by written agreement, and in practice often is. The statutory period runs from the relevant date for a valid application; for an ordinary planning application that is tied to receipt of a valid application rather than the later administrative act of a council marking it validated. What a council may lawfully insist on before it will validate is covered on our validation requirements page.

If the council misses the deadline you can appeal for non-determination, and in some circumstances claim a refund under the planning guarantee. See our guide to planning timescales for the fuller picture.

 

 

How the decision is made

 

Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 does most of the work in the English planning system: the determination must be made in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.

So the question is never whether the council likes your scheme. It is whether the scheme accords with the local plan, and if it does not, whether there are material considerations strong enough to justify departing from it.

That word “material” is doing a lot of work, and it is where most objections come unstuck. Loss of a view, effect on property values, the identity of the applicant and business competition are all things people raise, and none of them counts. See our guides to what is a material consideration and what is not.

For domestic extensions, local design guidance can also matter. Some councils use a 45-degree rule when assessing daylight, outlook and neighbour amenity, but it remains a planning guide rather than a national permitted-development rule.

One important material consideration is a genuine fallback position: a lawful alternative use or development which has a real prospect of happening if the application is refused.

In rural areas the settlement boundary can be an important local policy tool, but it does not by itself decide every national-policy question about whether land is within a settlement or in the countryside. Read the adopted boundary alongside the wording of the local policy, the current development plan and the August 2026 NPPF.

 

 

Who decides: officers or committee?

 

Most applications are decided by planning officers under delegated powers. Only a minority reach a planning committee.

That balance is about to be set nationally. A national scheme of delegation comes into force on 31st October 2026, standardising what must be delegated to officers and what may go to committee, and removing councillors’ power to call applications in. Until then, each council’s own scheme applies, and they vary considerably.

 

 

If you are refused

 

You can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. For most applications the deadline is six months from the decision notice; for a refused householder application it is only 12 weeks, and for advertisement consent only 8 weeks.

Before you appeal, understand what changed on 1st April 2026. Most appeals now follow an expedited procedure in which the Inspector considers only what was already in front of the council, with no statement of case, no new evidence. If the refusal could be overcome by amending the scheme or adding a report, the government’s own guidance says to submit a fresh application instead.

Which regime applies turns on when the application was submitted, not when you appeal, so both systems are running side by side. Our section planning appeals covers all of this, and the shorter deadlines that bite where an enforcement notice is involved.

 

 

What happens after permission is granted

 

Congratulations! But a grant is the start of the process, not the end (sorry!):

• most permissions carry conditions, and many require you to submit details for approval, so see discharge of conditions
• a pre-commencement condition must be discharged before you start, or your start may not count at all
• development must be begun within three years, so see making planning extant
• if the scheme needs to change, a section 73 application varies conditions and a section 96A handles the trivial. Neither can extend the three years
• if the building is listed, you need listed building consent as well, which is a separate application under a separate Act, and doing the works without it is a criminal offence

Building regulations approval is a different regime again, as are party wall matters and protected species licences. Planning permission is permission to develop. It is not permission to ignore anything else.

 

 

Someone else’s application

 

You do not have to be the applicant to have a stake. If a neighbour has applied for something that affects you, our guides on objecting to and supporting an application explain how to make representations that actually count.

One hard truth worth knowing early: only the applicant can appeal. If permission is granted and you object to it, there is no appeal for you, and the only route is the courts.

 

 

How Planning Geek can help

 

Did you know that Planning Geek submits many applications on behalf of clients? Our team of planning consultants are ready to assist you 365 days a year!  Reach out here for assistance.

The most useful thing we do is often the conversation before the application, working out whether you need permission at all, which application fits, and whether the scheme as drawn will survive. That is cheaper than a refusal, and since April 2026 it matters more than it used to.

 

Planning Applications relevant legislation

 

The planning application system rests on two Acts and one procedure Order. When checking any provision, use the “Changes to Legislation” panel on legislation.gov.uk, as later amendments are not always shown in the main text.

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 55 -the definition of development
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 57 -planning permission required for development
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 70 -determination of applications and the power to impose conditions
• Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, section 38 -the development plan test at section 38(6)
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 78 -the right of appeal
• Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 -the procedure: determination periods, publicity, notices and appeal deadlines

Other Planning Application Sections

 

Planning Applications Page Updated: 29th August 2026