planforecast/planning-refusal-reasons

Why English councils refuse planning permission

Counts of planning decisions and of the reasons councils gave for refusing them, by council and kind of work, for English local planning authorities. Published by Plan Forecast.

• Source and latest figures: https://planforecast.co.uk/data
• How the figures are counted: https://planforecast.co.uk/how-it-works
• Licence: CC BY 4.0
• This snapshot: 12 October 2026

Every figure is counted from decisions the councils publish on their own planning registers, and from the decision notices they publish with each refusal.

What is in it

File	Rows	One row is
refusal-reasons.csv	376	a council, a kind of work and a topic: how many refusals gave a reason about that topic
decisions.csv	80	a council and a kind of work: decisions, how many were granted, and the dates covered

This snapshot covers 89,096 decisions in eight councils, and 3,958 refusals in seven of them, 3,827 of whose decision notices were read.

Councils: Cheshire West and Chester, Leeds, North Yorkshire, Salford, Stockport, Trafford, Wakefield (decisions only) and York. More are added as their registers are read.

What is deliberately not in it

Counts only. No application reference, no address, no postcode, no coordinates, no proposal text, none of a council's own wording, and no person's name. Plan Forecast does not store the names of applicants, agents, case officers or objectors anywhere.

refusal-reasons.csv

Column	Type	Meaning
lpa_name	text	The local planning authority
lpa_ons_code	text	Its ONS code, for joining to other data (E06000065)
proposal_type	text	The kind of work (below), or all for every kind together, each refusal counted once
refusals	integer	Refusals of that kind of work in the window
refusals_read	integer	Of those, the refusals whose decision notice was read
topic	text	What a reason was about (below)
refusals_citing_topic	integer	Of the refusals read, how many gave at least one reason about this topic
window_months	integer	How many months back the counts reach (36, or fewer where a council's register has been read for less)

How to read it:

• A refusal usually gives several reasons, so a council's topics add up to more than its refusals read. The share of refusals citing a topic is refusals_citing_topic / refusals_read.
• A refusal whose notice was not read is counted as a refusal, never as a refusal without reasons.
• A council and kind of work appear only where at least 30 refusals, and at least half of them, were read.
• The topic is Plan Forecast's sorting of the council's reason. The reasons were cut from the notices and sorted into topics by software, and the sorting is checked against a person's.

Topics:

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

decisions.csv

Column	Type	Meaning
lpa_name	text	The local planning authority
lpa_ons_code	text	Its ONS code
proposal_type	text	The kind of work (below), or all for every decision read from the council's register
decisions	integer	For a kind of work, decisions granted or refused. For all, every decision
granted	integer	Decisions granted. Empty on an all row and where the rate is withheld
grant_rate	number	Granted divided by granted plus refused. Withdrawn applications are never counted as refusals. Empty where withheld
indicative	boolean	true where the rate rests on 10 to 29 decisions: a small sample
window_start	date	The earliest decision counted
window_end	date	The latest decision counted

An empty grant_rate means "too few to say" (under ten decisions), not zero.

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

Example

import pandas as pd

reasons = pd.read_csv("hf://datasets/planforecast/planning-refusal-reasons/refusal-reasons.csv")
reasons["share"] = reasons["refusals_citing_topic"] / reasons["refusals_read"]

# What gets a rear extension refused, council by council
rear = reasons[reasons["proposal_type"] == "rear_extension"]
print(rear.pivot(index="topic", columns="lpa_name", values="share").round(2))

Updates

The figures on planforecast.co.uk/data are generated from the live counts and change daily. This copy is a dated snapshot; each release here is a new snapshot.

How to cite

Plan Forecast (2026). Why English councils refuse planning permission: decisions and refusal reasons by council and kind of work. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23327502. Source: https://planforecast.co.uk/data

That DOI always resolves to the latest snapshot; each snapshot also has a DOI of its own, listed on the Zenodo record.

Attribution, where you reuse the figures:

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

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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