Decision times · When to submit
Is there a best month to submit a planning application?
Yes, by about 4 days. Which is to say: barely.
Across 121,090 decided applications submitted between January 2023 and December 2026, the month of submission moved the median wait by 4 days. Applications sent in October came back fastest, at 54 days; those sent in June slowest, at 58 days.
This is a question people ask constantly and almost nobody has measured. The answer is that the effect is real, consistent, and much smaller than the folklore suggests — smaller than the difference between two application types, and far smaller than the difference between two councils.
The figures below key on the month an application was submitted, not the month it was decided, because that is the only one an applicant controls. Four years of submissions are pooled so that a single unusual year cannot set the pattern, and every application counted has since been decided.
Median days by month of submission
Applications submitted January 2023 to December 2026, all since decided
January to December
Median days to a decision by month of submission. A rising line means a longer wait.
| Month submitted | Median days | Within 8 weeks | Applications |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 56 | 52% | 10,503 |
| February | 56 | 52% | 11,936 |
| March | 56 | 53% | 13,265 |
| April | 56 | 55% | 9,533 |
| May | 57 | 49% | 8,248 |
| June | 58 | 46% | 8,123 |
| July | 58 | 47% | 8,968 |
| August | 56 | 53% | 10,690 |
| September | 56 | 54% | 11,478 |
| October | 54 | 60% | 11,863 |
| November | 56 | 56% | 9,542 |
| December | 56 | 54% | 6,941 |
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January 10,503 applications 56 days
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February 11,936 applications 56 days
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March 13,265 applications 56 days
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April 9,533 applications 56 days
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May 8,248 applications 57 days
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June 8,123 applications 58 days
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July 8,968 applications 58 days
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August 10,690 applications 56 days
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September 11,478 applications 56 days
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October 11,863 applications 54 days
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November 9,542 applications 56 days
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December 6,941 applications 56 days
What to make of it
A 4 day spread across the year is a genuine signal, and it is not worth reorganising a project around. If you are choosing between submitting this week and submitting next month, submit this week: 4 days of expected saving does not pay for four weeks of waiting.
Where the effect does matter is at the margins of a decision you were making anyway. If a scheme is ready in June or ready in October and nothing else separates the two, the second is the better week's work.
The shape of the year is easier to explain than to exploit. Councils work to committee cycles, and committees do not meet over Christmas or through the height of summer; consultation periods that straddle a holiday stretch; and caseloads arrive unevenly, so an application joining a queue at its longest waits behind more work than one joining at its shortest. None of that is within an applicant's control, and all of it is smaller than the effect of submitting an application that is complete.
The levers that actually move the wait
- Which council decides it. The gap between the fastest and slowest councils in the league table runs to months, not days.
- What you are applying for. Application type moves the median far more than the calendar does.
- Whether the submission is complete. The statutory clock starts at validation, not receipt. An application that has to go back for missing drawings or fees loses that time before the clock has started at all — and across the index, validation follows receipt by about a week on average even when nothing is wrong.
Cite these figures
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Planning decision times by month of submission, January 2023 to December 2026: applications submitted in October were decided fastest, at a median of 54 days, and those submitted in June slowest, at 58 days — a spread of 4 days. Based on 121,090 decided applications from 45 UK councils. Source: PlanIndex, planindex.co.uk.