Decision times · When to submit
Is there a best month to submit a planning application?
Yes, by about 6 days. Which is to say: barely.
Across 650,206 decided applications submitted between October 2022 and September 2026, the month of submission moved the median wait by 6 days. Applications sent in June came back fastest, at 54 days; those sent in December slowest, at 60 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 October 2022 to September 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 | 54% | 58,053 |
| February | 55 | 57% | 64,287 |
| March | 55 | 57% | 61,488 |
| April | 56 | 51% | 45,662 |
| May | 56 | 55% | 42,919 |
| June | 54 | 61% | 37,173 |
| July | 55 | 55% | 35,163 |
| August | 56 | 51% | 49,829 |
| September | 56 | 55% | 65,814 |
| October | 54 | 60% | 77,296 |
| November | 56 | 51% | 60,867 |
| December | 60 | 45% | 51,655 |
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January 58,053 applications 56 days
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February 64,287 applications 55 days
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March 61,488 applications 55 days
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April 45,662 applications 56 days
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May 42,919 applications 56 days
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June 37,173 applications 54 days
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July 35,163 applications 55 days
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August 49,829 applications 56 days
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September 65,814 applications 56 days
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October 77,296 applications 54 days
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November 60,867 applications 56 days
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December 51,655 applications 60 days
What to make of it
A 6 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: 6 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 December or ready in June 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, October 2022 to September 2026: applications submitted in June were decided fastest, at a median of 54 days, and those submitted in December slowest, at 60 days — a spread of 6 days. Based on 650,206 decided applications from 343 UK councils. Source: PlanIndex, planindex.co.uk.