Planning committee decisions,from the minutes

We read the planning committee minutes of 97% of UK councils, including Northern Ireland. Search the decisions from 346 of them by place, outcome, the officers' advice, the vote and who spoke.

Officers decide most planning applications. The larger and contested ones go to a committee of councillors, who debate them and vote in public.

What happened at that meeting is hard to find. It is buried in minutes and officer reports, often hundreds of pages of PDF, spread across each council's own website, and some councils only send their minutes on request. Almost none set out, in one place, how and why the committee reached its decision.

We read them for you. For each decision we set out what was proposed, what officers recommended and why, who spoke, what councillors argued and how they voted, quoting the council's own words. The decision, the officers' advice, whether the committee went against it, the vote and the meeting date also come back in the Plota API, for every application decided at committee.

How often committeesoverrule their officers

11.1% of the decisions on Plota went against the planning officers' recommendation: 918 of 8,268. The rate runs from 0% to 82.1% across the 205 councils with at least 15 decisions.

0%82%

Each dot is a council. Source: Plota analysis of planning committee minutes and officer reports.

Most often against officers
CouncilAgainst officersDecisions
Newry Mourne Down82.1%39
Fenland54.2%83
Walsall40%20
Torridge36%25
Chorley35.4%48
Stafford35%20
Aberdeenshire34.1%44
Tandridge33.3%24

Councils with at least 15 decisions. Each name opens that council's committee page.

Each council's committee,region by region

Each council has its own page: how often its committee goes against officer advice, what it approves and refuses month by month, and every decision it has made, newest first.

London32 councils · 732 decisions
South East64 councils · 1,643 decisions
East of England43 councils · 1,167 decisions
South West28 councils · 678 decisions
West Midlands23 councils · 448 decisions
East Midlands31 councils · 797 decisions
North West35 councils · 825 decisions
North East12 councils · 214 decisions
Yorkshire and Humber16 councils · 279 decisions
Wales22 councils · 486 decisions
Scotland31 councils · 531 decisions
Northern Ireland9 councils · 468 decisions

What happened in committee,for each decision

Each decision has its own page, written from the minutes and the officer report: the site, what officers recommended and why, who spoke, what members said, the vote and the decision. Quotes are the council's own words, and every page links to the minutes it came from.

This one was decided on 14 September 2026. Officers recommended approval; the committee refused it, 6 votes to 2.

Read the full decision

Who speaks at the meeting,and how the committee decides

Members of the public, councillors and applicants can address a planning committee before it votes. Across the decisions whose minutes record who spoke, the committee goes against its officers far more often when someone speaks against them.

When objectors speak

2.1×as often refused

Where officers recommended approval, the committee refused 18.3% of applications when objectors spoke, against 8.6% when they did not.

Objectors spoke18.3%
Nobody from that side spoke8.6%

1,153 and 2,207 decisions

When ward or parish councillors speak

2.4×as often refused

Where officers recommended approval, the committee refused 17.8% of applications when councillors spoke, against 7.5% when they did not.

Councillors spoke17.8%
Nobody from that side spoke7.5%

1,433 and 1,927 decisions

When the applicant or their agent speaks

2.7×as often approved

Where officers recommended refusal, the committee approved 50.8% of applications when the applicant or agent spoke, against 18.8% when they did not.

Applicant or agent spoke50.8%
Nobody from that side spoke18.8%

498 and 80 decisions

Speakers turn up for contested applications, so these figures show what goes together, not that speaking changed the vote. Source: Plota analysis of 4,198 planning committee decisions whose minutes record who spoke, with the officers' recommendation held fixed.

Committee decisionsin the API

Every application the API returns carries committee: the outcome, what the officers recommended, whether the committee went against them, the vote where the minutes record it, the meeting date, the committee and the decision's page. Add committee=1 to /v1/applications for applications decided at committee, with the same place, type and date filters as any other search. It is on every plan, the free one included.

Read the developer docs · Get an API key

Decisions are read from each council's published committee minutes and officer reports, and checked against the record before they are shown. Figures count the latest decision on each application.