Planning committee decisions,from the minutes

We read the planning committee minutes of 99% of UK councils, including Northern Ireland. Search the decisions from 375 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

9.9% of the decisions on Plota went against the planning officers' recommendation: 940 of 9,498. The rate runs from 0% to 80% across the 239 councils with at least 15 decisions.

0%80%

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

Most often against officers
CouncilAgainst officersDecisions
Newry Mourne Down80%50
Fenland51.8%85
Broxtowe39.5%43
Torridge36%25
Chorley33.3%48
Stafford33.3%21
Tandridge32%25
Wealden30.8%26

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.

London33 councils · 787 decisions
South East67 councils · 1,909 decisions
East of England44 councils · 1,231 decisions
South West32 councils · 867 decisions
West Midlands28 councils · 548 decisions
East Midlands36 councils · 913 decisions
North West37 councils · 950 decisions
North East13 councils · 252 decisions
Yorkshire and Humber20 councils · 337 decisions
Wales23 councils · 531 decisions
Scotland32 councils · 630 decisions
Northern Ireland10 councils · 543 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

2.2×as often refused

Where officers recommended approval, the committee refused 17.6% of applications when objectors spoke, against 8% when they did not.

Objectors spoke17.6%
Nobody from that side spoke8%

1,203 and 2,489 decisions

When ward or parish councillors speak

2.4×as often refused

Where officers recommended approval, the committee refused 16.5% of applications when councillors spoke, against 7% when they did not.

Councillors spoke16.5%
Nobody from that side spoke7%

1,602 and 2,090 decisions

When the applicant or their agent speaks

3.1×as often approved

Where officers recommended refusal, the committee approved 48.5% of applications when the applicant or agent spoke, against 15.8% when they did not.

Applicant or agent spoke48.5%
Nobody from that side spoke15.8%

517 and 95 decisions

Speakers turn up for contested applications, so these figures show what goes together, not that speaking changed the vote. Source: Plota analysis of 4,822 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.