People who contact me after a refusal nearly always ask the same question: what are my chances at appeal?
Most have already heard that roughly one planning appeal in three succeeds. What they want to know is whether their appeal will succeed — their plans, on their site, against the particular reasons the council gave for refusal.
I cannot answer that from a national statistic. I need to read the refusal, the planning officer’s report and the material that went into the application. Anyone giving serious advice is in the same position.
The national figure is useful background. Once I have the papers in front of me, it tells me very little.
How I assess the chances of an appeal
I usually begin with the officer’s report. I read each reason for refusal and then look at how the officer arrived at it. What harm does the council say the development would cause? Does the report explain that harm properly? Is it supported by the policies and by what is actually on the site?
Sometimes the reasoning is thin. A council may say that an extension is too deep even though its guidance sets no fixed limit and the relationship with the neighbouring house is unremarkable. The report may describe only a modest effect and then conclude, without much explanation, that the harm is unacceptable. There may be something worth challenging there.
A highways objection supported by clear measurements and specialist advice is a different proposition. So is a direct conflict with an up-to-date policy, or a design that needs major changes before it could reasonably be approved. An appeal tests the scheme that was refused. It is rarely the right place to rescue a proposal that needs redesigning.
Most cases are less clear-cut. One refusal reason looks vulnerable, another does not, and a modest amendment might deal with the whole problem. In that situation I compare the prospects of an appeal with the time and cost of making a revised application. Winning an argument with the council is not much comfort if changing a window or shortening an extension would have secured permission months earlier.
For applications now caught by the Part 1 written representations procedure, I also need to know whether the evidence required to answer the refusal was included in the original application. Part 1 does not normally allow a full statement of case, new evidence or new arguments. The appeal form gives you space to explain why you disagree with the council, using the material already on file.
If the application needed a daylight report or highways assessment and none was submitted, an appeal will not normally cure the omission. By the time the refusal arrives, most of a Part 1 case has already been assembled, whether well or badly.
A refusal by committee against the planning officer’s recommendation is often worth examining closely. Local opposition may have carried more weight in the room than it should have done. The committee can still reach a sound decision that differs from the officer’s, so I read its minutes and reasons rather than assuming the appeal will win.
Previous permissions and appeals can help, provided they really are comparable. Another four-metre extension in the same road proves little if the neighbouring windows, land levels or orientation are different. I have seen plenty of cases padded out with nearby examples that fall apart as soon as you look at the sites.
What the national success rate actually measures
The latest Planning Inspectorate statistics show that 31% of section 78 appeals were allowed between April and June 2026. Householder appeals did a little better, at 37%.
Hearings and inquiries had higher success rates, although they dealt with a small and quite different group of cases. The Planning Inspectorate chooses the procedure according to the issues and the evidence involved. A hearing is not an upgrade that an appellant can select to improve the odds.
The figures cover refusals that somebody chose to appeal. Approved applications sit outside the data, as do refusals their owners decided not to pursue. At the other end are appeals that never had much prospect of success. People submit half-baked rubbish, and some applicants appeal because they are angry rather than because they have a planning case.
Nobody records which appeals were hopeless from the outset, so there is no reliable way to remove them and calculate a separate success rate for the sensible ones. The national figure mixes all of those cases together.
The figure still has some value. It shows that councils are overturned regularly and that appealing is a perfectly normal part of the planning system. Its usefulness ends there.
The appeal I did not make
In 2014 I applied to extend my little ground-floor flat in west London. I was a planner myself, working for a council on the other side of the city. The proposed extension was conventional and, frankly, quite boring. I assumed it would be approved.
I was so confident that I did not even ring the case officer. The application was refused.
I reduced the size of the extension and applied again. The smaller version was approved and I built it. Six months later my next-door neighbour applied for an extension identical to my original proposal. The same officer who had refused mine approved it.
There may have been differences between the two applications that are no longer obvious. I cannot know what an inspector would have decided. I still wish I had appealed. I understood the policies, knew the site and believed the first design was reasonable, yet I let the refusal go untested.
Getting a useful second opinion
After a refusal, people often ask their architect, builder or a friend who has dealt with the planning system before. The answer may be confident and honestly meant. It may also be based on one or two experiences that have little in common with the case at hand.
Some appellants look up the inspector allocated to them and study how many of that inspector’s previous appeals were allowed. I have never used an inspector’s scorecard to advise a client. The result of a hundred unrelated cases tells me almost nothing about the merits of the next one.
The person advising you needs to read the file. They should be able to explain where the council’s case is strong, where it is vulnerable and whether the shortcomings can be dealt with through an appeal. If they have not done that work, any percentage they give you is guesswork.
I have worked on a couple of thousand appeals and decisions still surprise me. Close cases sometimes go either way.
If you want a view on your appeal
Send us the decision notice, the officer’s report and the planning application reference. We will look at the case and tell you whether the council’s reasons stand up and whether appealing is the sensible next step.
My Planning Appeal handles suitable Part 1 appeals in England for a fixed fee of £399. We turn away cases where we cannot see a reasonable route to permission. Of the appeals we accept, we win well over half.