What is a material consideration?

When a council decides a planning application, it cannot simply weigh up whatever it likes. It must reach its decision on planning grounds, meaning the matters the law recognises as relevant to the use and development of land. These relevant matters are known as material considerations.

Understanding what is (and is not) material is the single most useful thing you can learn before commenting on an application, whether you are the applicant, a supporter or an objector. A well-made point that is material carries weight. A strongly-felt point that is not material carries none, however many times it is repeated.

This page explains what counts. Its companion page sets out what is not a material consideration.

What the law says

The starting point is the statutory duty to decide applications in line with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. This “plan-led” test is long established under section 70(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, and it applies equally to applications and to appeals.

A note on the framework: the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 introduced changes to how the development plan and national policy interact (including National Development Management Policies). The change to the test is section 93 of that Act, and it has never been brought into force. Section 38(6) in its familiar form is still the test, and the stronger wording of material considerations strongly indicating otherwise does not apply. We will update this page if that changes.

Neither the Acts nor the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) give a closed list of what counts as material. Parliament deliberately left it open, so that decision-makers can respond to the facts of each site. What the courts have done is set the boundaries.

The legal test for a material consideration

Stringer v Minister of Housing and Local Government [1970] 1 WLR 1281 is an important early authority for the broad scope of planning considerations. The House of Lords later put the point particularly clearly in Westminster City Council v Great Portland Estates plc [1985] AC 661: a consideration is material to planning where it serves a planning purpose, and a planning purpose is one concerned with the character of the use of land rather than merely the private purposes or interests of a particular occupier.

That does not mean human circumstances are automatically excluded. Westminster also recognised that personal hardship and the circumstances of occupiers can sometimes be relevant as exceptional or special considerations. The important point is that planning control is concerned with land use and its planning consequences, not simply with favouring or disadvantaging a particular person.

A matter can be material even if, in the end, it is given little weight. Being material simply means the decision-maker is entitled to take it into account. How much it counts for is a separate question, covered below.

Common material considerations

The following are routinely treated as material. This list is illustrative, not exhaustive, and the relevance of any point always depends on the site and the proposal:

• The development plan: the statutory development plan, which can include the local plan, an adopted Supplementary Plan, any neighbourhood plan and a spatial strategy such as the London Plan where relevant. This is the starting point, not just a material consideration. In rural areas this includes the settlement boundary, which decides whether your site is treated as built-up area or open countryside
• Emerging local plan – the weight it carries depends on the stage of preparation, the extent of unresolved objections and how closely it follows the NPPF
• Supplementary Planning Documents (SPDs) – legacy SPDs can be material considerations, but unlike a new Supplementary Plan they are not themselves part of the development plan
• National planning policy: the NPPF, Planning Practice Guidance, relevant Written Ministerial Statements and, where applicable, separate national policy such as the National Planning Policy for Waste
• Design, layout, scale and appearance: how the proposal sits in its surroundings
• Impact on the character and appearance of the area, including the street scene
• Loss of privacy, overlooking and overshadowing to neighbouring properties
• Loss of light and general residential amenity
• Highway safety, access, parking and traffic generation
• Noise, disturbance, smell, dust and other amenity impacts arising from the use
• Heritage: effects on listed buildings, conservation areas, scheduled monuments and their settings
• Trees, landscaping, ecology and biodiversity, including protected species and biodiversity net gain
• Flood risk and drainage
• Contaminated land and ground stability
• The planning history of the site, including previous appeal decisions. North Wiltshire District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment (1993) 65 P&CR 137 confirms why consistency matters: a materially indistinguishable earlier decision can be a material consideration, although the later decision-maker remains free to depart from it if there is a proper planning reason and that departure is explained
• The fallback position: what could lawfully be done anyway, for example under permitted development

The number of representations is not what makes a planning point material. What matters is the substance of the issues raised. Two hundred objections repeating the same non-material concern do not turn it into a planning reason for refusal; one well-evidenced representation identifying a genuine amenity, highway, heritage or other material impact can matter a great deal.

Who decides, and how much weight?

Whether something is capable of being material is a question of law. How much weight to give it is a matter of planning judgement for the decision-maker: the case officer, planning committee or, on appeal, the Planning Inspector.

Tesco Stores Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment [1995] 1 WLR 759 is the classic authority for that distinction. A decision-maker must not ignore a consideration because it has wrongly been treated as legally irrelevant. Once a consideration is properly identified as material, however, the weight given to it is for the planning decision-maker, subject to the normal public-law limit against irrationality. The courts supervise legality; they do not re-run the planning balance.

This is why two applications that look similar can be decided differently: the balance of material considerations, and the weight given to each, is specific to the site.

Why this matters to you

If you are commenting on an application, frame every point as a material consideration and, where you can, tie it to a specific policy in the development plan or the NPPF. A comment that says “this will overlook my garden and conflicts with local plan policy on residential amenity” is far more useful than “I don’t want this built.”

Read this alongside our guides on how to object to a planning application and how to support one, and be clear on what is not a material consideration.

Relevant legislation

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 70: the duty to have regard to the development plan and to any other material considerations
• Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, section 38: what the development plan is, and the duty to decide in accordance with it unless material considerations indicate otherwise
• Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, section 93: the stronger test and national development management policies, not in force

Other Planning Application Sections

Material Consideration Page Updated: 30th August 2026