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Decision times · By application type

How long each type of planning application takes

27 days to 118 days, depending what you are asking for.

Across 35,401 decisions from 45 UK councils in the year to December 2026, the median wait ranged from 27 days for telecoms to 118 days for reserved matters. The type of application changes the wait more than the choice of council does.

Every council's headline figure mixes its whole caseload together. That is the right way to summarise a council, but it hides something useful: a tree works consent, a discharge of conditions and an outline application for a housing site are not the same job, and they do not take the same time. The spread below is wider than the spread between all but the most extreme councils.

Categories are derived from what each council publishes — the application type wording first, then the reference suffix, then the source's own hint. Councils do not share a taxonomy, so this is a mapping, not a standard. Types with fewer than 25 decisions nationally are left out.

Median days by application type

Year to December 2026 · 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026

Median days from planning application to decision by application type, year to December 2026. Source: PlanIndex, planindex.co.uk.
Application type Median days Within 8 weeks 9 in 10 by Decisions
Telecoms 27 91% 56 149
Other 40 67% 163 213
Prior approval 40 84% 70 595
Trees 42 77% 83 4,432
Amendments 47 62% 143 1,650
Lawful development 55 67% 102 2,756
Outline 56 53% 173 1,383
Conditions 57 49% 176 4,812
Advertising 59 45% 150 909
Householder 63 38% 136 3,444
Full applications 71 31% 196 13,212
Heritage and listed buildings 71 34% 194 1,634
Reserved matters 118 15% 273 212
  1. Telecoms 149 decided 27 days
  2. Other 213 decided 40 days
  3. Prior approval 595 decided 40 days
  4. Trees 4,432 decided 42 days
  5. Amendments 1,650 decided 47 days
  6. Lawful development 2,756 decided 55 days
  7. Outline 1,383 decided 56 days
  8. Conditions 4,812 decided 57 days
  9. Advertising 909 decided 59 days
  10. Householder 3,444 decided 63 days
  11. Full applications 13,212 decided 71 days
  12. Heritage and listed buildings 1,634 decided 71 days
  13. Reserved matters 212 decided 118 days

Reading these figures

The eight week target applies to most of these types, which is what makes the spread interesting: the same statutory clock produces very different real outcomes depending on what is being decided. Some of that is genuine complexity — a reserved matters application follows an outline permission and carries the detail of a whole scheme. Some of it is process: prior approval and telecoms applications run on their own shorter statutory clocks, which is why they sit at the fast end rather than because they are treated as urgent.

A category is a mapping from what councils publish, not a legal classification. Where a council's wording is ambiguous, the application falls into a broader bucket rather than being guessed into a narrow one, so the large categories are more mixed than the small ones.

For a specific council

Each council's own page carries the same breakdown for its own caseload, alongside its rank and trend. That is usually the more useful comparison: a council that looks slow overall may simply decide more of the kinds of application that take longer everywhere.

Cite these figures

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Planning decision times by application type, year to December 2026: the median ranges from 27 days for telecoms to 118 days for reserved matters, across 35,401 decisions from 45 UK councils. The national median across all types is 57 days. Source: PlanIndex, planindex.co.uk.