The short answer is eight weeks for a householder application in England — an extension, a loft conversion, a garage conversion. The longer answer is that the eight weeks does not start when you press send, and that is where most of the frustration comes from.
The eight-week clock, and when it actually starts
Councils in England have a statutory period to determine most householder and minor applications: eight weeks from the date the application is validated. Larger schemes classed as major development get thirteen weeks. Validation is not the same as submission — it is the point at which the council agrees your application is complete enough to assess. Until then, the clock has not started and your application is not really in the queue.
Validation: the bit nobody warns you about
Between submitting and validating, a case officer checks your application against the council’s local validation list — the drawings, forms and supporting documents they require. If something is missing or a drawing is at the wrong scale, the application is returned as invalid. Not refused, just not started. You fix it, resubmit, and the whole thing goes back to the end of the line.
How long validation takes varies enormously by council and time of year: a few days if you are lucky and the officer is on top of the pile, two or three weeks if you are not. It is the single most avoidable delay in the process, and it is almost always about drawing conventions rather than the design — scales, a missing north arrow, no red line on the location plan. We cover exactly what is required in planning drawings, explained.
The 21-day consultation
Once validated, the council consults: neighbours are notified, a site notice may go up, and there is a minimum 21-day window for comments. Statutory consultees — highways, conservation, drainage, depending on the project — get their say in the same period. This runs inside the eight weeks rather than on top of it, but it does mean nothing much appears to happen for the first three weeks, which unnerves people who are watching the portal daily. That is normal.
Why “eight weeks” often becomes ten or twelve
If the officer cannot determine the application inside the statutory period, they will usually ask you to agree an extension of time in writing. You are entitled to refuse and treat the delay as a non-determination, but in practice agreeing is nearly always the better move: an officer who needs another fortnight to recommend approval is a much better outcome than a technical refusal. Extensions are routine, not a bad sign.
What actually causes delay
- Invalid submissions — the big one, and entirely preventable.
- Neighbour objections — not fatal, but they can push a decision from delegated officer sign-off to a planning committee, which meets monthly and adds weeks.
- Conservation areas and listed buildings — extra consultation, and a higher bar for the drawings.
- Requests for more information — usually a drawing that does not show something the officer needs to see.
- August and Christmas — planning departments take holidays like everyone else.
And before any of that: getting the drawings done
The council’s clock is only the second half of the timeline. Before you can submit, you need a measured, scaled, council-ready drawing set. That is the part you control, and it is where most of the avoidable weeks are lost — waiting on an architect’s diary, or discovering three revisions in that the survey was wrong.
Our Standard Planning Pack is a fixed £650 and delivered in 7–10 days, with unlimited revisions during the design stage so the layout argument happens before the council sees it, not after. If your project is permitted development, you may not need permission at all — a Lawful Development Certificate uses the same drawings and is a faster, lower-risk route.
If it is refused
Householder appeals go through the Planning Inspectorate’s fast-track service and typically take a couple of months; other appeal routes take considerably longer. In most cases, a revised application addressing the officer’s stated reasons is quicker and cheaper than appealing — the reasons for refusal are published, so you are not guessing.
A realistic timeline
For a straightforward householder extension, drawn properly and validated first time: roughly 1–2 weeks for drawings, a few days to two weeks for validation, then eight weeks of determination. Call it ten to twelve weeks from first phone call to decision, with the caveat that objections or a committee referral can add a month.
The single biggest thing you can do to protect that timeline is to submit something that validates on the first attempt. If you want to talk a project through, get in touch — it is usually a short conversation.