The average decision time for Local Development decisions has remained consistent since data collection began in 2012/13.

The average decision time for 25,244 Local Developments in 2018-19 was 9.0 weeks, matching the time for the previous year which was the quickest annual decision time since the start of this data collection.

Local housing applications were decided in an average of 12.3 weeks, slightly slower than the previous year (12.2 weeks), but which follows five years of annual decreases in average times prior to this.


The average decision time was influenced by a small number of applications with lengthy decision times, the percentage of local housing applications with decisions within two months has increased by 1.8 percentage points from 54.9% in 2017-18 to 56.7% in 2018-19.

Major Development decisions were quicker on average in 2018-19.

The average decision time for 207 Major Developments in 2018-19 was 32.5 weeks, just over a week quicker than the average of 33.6 weeks in the previous year. Major housing applications were decided in an average of 35.1 weeks, more than three weeks quicker than the previous year (38.2 weeks) and the quickest annual decision time since the start of this data collection in 2012-13.

For the year 2018-19 the overall rate of approvals for all types of application was 93.7%. The delegation rate was 95.8%, the highest rate since the start of this data collection in 2012-13.