planforecast/planning-refusal-reasons

The Plan Forecast Planning Decisions Report

Planning decisions, decision times and the reasons councils gave for refusing applications, by council and kind of work, for the English councils Plan Forecast reads. The data of The Plan Forecast Planning Decisions Report, published monthly by Plan Forecast; each edition is frozen, and is a version of the same DOI.

• This edition: October 2026, published 22 October 2026: the report
• Window: decisions from October 2023 to September 2026, narrowed for a council read over less (its window_start)
• Councils: Cheshire West and Chester, Ealing, Leeds, North Yorkshire, Salford, Stockport, Trafford, Wakefield and York
• Licence: CC BY 4.0
• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23327502 (every edition; each has a DOI of its own on the Zenodo record)

Key findings

• Across the 9 councils we read, 89% of the 30,802 householder planning applications decided in the 36 months to September 2026 (for Ealing, since March 2025; for Wakefield, since June 2025) were approved (Plan Forecast, Planning Decisions Report, October 2026 edition).
• Across the 9 councils we read, half of the 30,798 householder planning applications decided in the 36 months to September 2026 (for Ealing, since March 2025; for Wakefield, since June 2025) were decided within 55 days, and three quarters within 69 days (Plan Forecast, Planning Decisions Report, October 2026 edition).
• Of the 9 councils we read, Wakefield approved the highest share of householder planning applications: 96% of the 889 it decided from June 2025 to September 2026 (Plan Forecast, Planning Decisions Report, October 2026 edition).

What is in it

File	Rows	One row is
decisions.csv	100	a council and a kind of work (or householder work together): decisions, granted, refused, the share approved and days to decide
refusal-reasons.csv	123	a council and a topic: how many of its refusals read gave a reason about it

Rows with scope councils are every council together. Each file names its edition.

What is deliberately not in it

Counts only. No application reference, address, postcode, coordinates, proposal text, council wording or person's name. Plan Forecast stores no name of an applicant, agent, case officer or objector anywhere.

decisions.csv

Column	Meaning
edition	The edition, yyyy-mm
scope	council, or councils for every council together
lpa_name, lpa_ons_code	The local planning authority and its ONS code (empty for councils)
proposal_type	householder (the first seven kinds together) or a kind of work (below)
window_start, window_end	The days counted
decisions	Every decision counted, whatever its outcome
granted, refused, withdrawn	By outcome
approved_percent	Granted of granted and refused, rounded; empty where held_back
approved_low_percent, approved_high_percent	Its 95% Wilson interval
timed	Granted and refused with sound dates: what the days rest on
p25_days, median_days, p75_days	Days from validation (or receipt) to decision: each a day some decision took; empty where fewer than 30 were timed
held_back	true where fewer than 30 were granted or refused, so the share approved is empty; decisions counts withdrawals too

Kinds of work:

proposal_type	Meaning
rear_extension	Rear extension
side_extension	Side extension
two_storey_extension	Two-storey extension
loft_dormer	Loft conversion or dormer
outbuilding	Garden room or outbuilding
garage_conversion	Garage conversion
porch_front	Front porch
new_dwelling_garden	New dwelling in a garden
change_of_use	Change of use

refusal-reasons.csv

Column	Meaning
edition, scope, lpa_name, lpa_ons_code, window_start, window_end	As above
refusals	Refusals in the window
refusals_read	Of those, the refusals whose decision notice was read
topic	What a reason was about (below)
refusals_citing_topic	Of the refusals read, how many gave at least one reason about this topic
share_percent	That, of the refusals read

A council appears only where at least 30 of its refusals, and half of them, were read. A refusal usually gives several reasons, so the shares add up to more than 100.

topic	Meaning
design_character	Design and character of the area
residential_amenity	Neighbours' amenity
highway_parking	Highways and parking
heritage	Heritage assets
green_belt_open_countryside	Green Belt and open countryside
trees_landscape_ecology	Trees, landscape and ecology
flood_drainage	Flooding and drainage
principle_of_development	Principle of development
permitted_development	Not permitted development
living_conditions_future_occupiers	Living conditions for future occupiers
neighbouring_land_use_conflict	Conflict with neighbouring land uses
insufficient_information	Insufficient information
other	Other

Updates

A new edition on the first of each month, released here by Plan Forecast's own machine: the files, this README and a GitHub release, from which Zenodo makes a new version of the DOI. Earlier editions stay on the Zenodo record and at their own addresses on the site.

How to cite

Plan Forecast (2026). The Plan Forecast Planning Decisions Report, October 2026 edition. https://planforecast.co.uk/research/planning-decisions/2026-10. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23327502

Attribution, where you reuse the figures:

Planning decision figures by Plan Forecast (planforecast.co.uk), counted from local planning authorities' own public registers.

Where else it is published

• The report: https://planforecast.co.uk/research/planning-decisions/2026-10
• Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23327502
• GitHub: https://github.com/planforecast/planning-refusal-reasons
• Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/planforecast/why-english-councils-refuse-planning-permission
• Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/datasets/planforecast/planning-refusal-reasons

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Copy, publish, adapt and use these figures, including commercially, provided you attribute them. The underlying records remain each authority's own and are published on their registers.

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