Planning appeals in London

Time limits that cannot be stretched

A householder appeal must be made within 12 weeks of the date on the decision notice. Other planning appeals have 6 months from the decision notice (or expiry of the decision period). Both come from the Development Management Procedure Order 2015.

The clock runs from the date on the notice and not from the day you open the envelope, so send us the refusal the day it arrives. If the deadline is close, we put the grounds of appeal and the plans the inspector needs first.

A late appeal is normally not accepted, so do not wait for a quieter month.

How long an appeal takes

The Planning Inspectorate publishes its own timings. For householder appeals decided by written representations, its latest statistics show a median of 11.6 weeks. Across all written-representation appeals the twelve-month median was 18 weeks.

Those are national medians for appeals that have finished, not a forecast for yours. Site visits, hearings and complex cases run longer, and the Inspectorate's workload shifts from month to month.

Plan in months. Do not commit to building work on the assumption of a quick answer.

What the success rates mean, and do not mean

In the latest quarter published, the Inspectorate allowed 31 per cent of section 78 planning appeals, and 29 per cent of those decided by written representations.

Those rates cover every kind of appeal in England, from garden buildings to housing estates. They say nothing about your house and are neither a promise nor a prediction. What they do show is that most appeals are dismissed, which is why the decision to appeal should rest on the specific reasons given.

Where a reason is narrow, such as one overbearing elevation, a design change often achieves more than an argument.

The bundle we prepare

Householder cases normally run by written representations. We write the statement of case, answering each refusal reason in turn against the development plan, and we prepare the drawings the inspector will use.

The drawings are usually the council set, corrected where the refusal exposed a weakness. Where the dispute is about height, outlook or daylight we add sections and 3D views, since the relationship is easier to judge in section than in words.

Someone outside the drafting team reads the whole bundle, and every sheet comes from one model so they agree. The method is described on our planning drawings page.

Where the officer's report helps

The delegated or committee report explains a refusal in full: the policies applied, what neighbours said and where the case turned. An appeal succeeds or fails on whether those reasons stand when someone independent reads them cold.

We check three things. Does the reason cite a policy that covers the proposal? Did the officer measure something the drawings show differently? Were similar houses nearby treated differently? Decisions on the same street or terrace carry weight with an inspector, and our constraints check already looks for them.

If the report contains a plain factual error, such as the wrong depth or a window that is not there, a short covering note and a corrected sheet may do more than a full appeal.

Appeal, reapply or choose another route

A revised application can be quicker and cheaper when the refusal is about detail. An appeal suits a case where the council appears to have misread its own policy. Sometimes the answer is another route altogether, such as a Lawful Development Certificate for work that never needed permission, or prior approval for a deeper rear extension.

We set the options out in writing with a fixed quote for each, and you decide. If the building work is already finished, see retrospective planning applications. To see how a particular council's decisions have gone, start from architectural drawings by area.