Around 70,000 planning applications are refused in England and Wales every year. Nationally, roughly one application in ten is refused — but in the strictest boroughs the figure is closer to one in four. Which councils are the toughest, and what should you do if yours is one of them?
The 20 councils that refuse the most
The rankings below come from PlanningLens, which analysed more than 3.7 million planning decisions from council portals between January 2020 and July 2026 (councils with at least 200 decisions):
- Barking & Dagenham — 28% of applications refused
- East Hertfordshire — 27%
- Uttlesford — 25%
- Maldon — 24%
- Harrow — 24%
- Brent — 24%
- Waltham Forest — 24%
- Greenwich — 22%
- Caerphilly — 22%
- Elmbridge — 22%
- Redbridge — 21%
- Bradford — 21%
- Havering — 21%
- Hillingdon — 20%
- Enfield — 20%
- Kingston upon Thames — 20%
- Eastleigh — 19%
- Thurrock — 19%
- Torbay — 19%
- Bromley — 19%
The official government statistics tell the same story: analysis of the ministry’s live planning tables found that 18 of the 21 councils refusing the highest proportion of applications in the year to December 2025 were in London and the Greater South East.
The same names, year after year
When we first wrote this article back in 2020, the list was topped by Redbridge (which refused a remarkable 47% of applications in one quarter of 2019), with Barking & Dagenham, Maldon, Hillingdon, East Hertfordshire, Uttlesford, Harrow, Enfield and Brent all close behind. Six years on, almost every one of those councils is still in the top twenty. Strict councils stay strict — the pattern is driven by development pressure, conservation areas and Green Belt, but also by local planning cultures that rarely change.
These are also, not coincidentally, the councils we hear from most. Harrow, Hillingdon, Redbridge and Enfield come up again and again in the enquiries we receive, most often over refused rear extensions, dormers and two-storey side extensions. Several of the strictest boroughs feature in our case studies — including a two-storey side extension won on appeal in Kingston, one of the twenty strictest councils in the country.
We now run dedicated planning-appeal pages for a growing number of these boroughs, each built around real appeals we have won there: Barnet, Ealing, Hounslow, Islington, Elmbridge, Bromley and Wiltshire. If your council is on the list above, your borough page is the place to start.
What a high refusal rate means for you
A high refusal rate does not mean your proposal was bad — it often means your council applies its guidance more rigidly than most. That matters, because appeal inspectors are independent of the council and are generally more flexible: nationally, around a third of appeals succeed, and our own success rate is higher than 50%. If you live in one of the boroughs above and your gut says your refusal was unfair, it very probably deserves a second look. Our complete guide to winning a planning appeal explains how the process works under the 2026 rules.
Remember the deadlines: 12 weeks from the decision notice for householder applications, six months for most other types. Send us your refusal for free initial advice — we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s worth appealing, and if it is, we handle everything for a fixed fee of £399. A refusal of planning permission need not be the end.