Where it’s hard · Free
London’s refusal map.
Where the published record has the lowest and highest approval rates. Borough case mix differs, so this is not a claim that the same scheme would receive a different answer. Compare boroughs, years and scheme types below; subscribers unlock the reasons and policy evidence behind refusals.
Approval rate · All schemes · All years
Approval rate by borough · scroll to zoom
At a glance · London's published decision recordOpen Planning Atlas →
71%
lowest approval — Brent
29 in 100 refused
99%
highest — City Of London
99 in 100 approved
28pts
gap, top to bottom
observed borough rates
100,752
applications refused
across London, on record
Compare boroughs over time
Annual approval rates, with the number of decided applications behind each point.
Click a line to investigate that borough. Decision counts appear when you hover a point.
Full borough table — All schemes · All yearsFree · click a bar to investigate
Why London refuses
42.8%
Design, character and appearance
The leading ground in the available notices: 13,748 individual reasons across 11,809 refusal notices in 29 boroughs.
NPPF chapter 12 · paragraphs 135 and 139 ↗Unlock the full reason breakdown and its current national policy crosswalk.
Subscribe for the evidence →Based on 18,228 high-confidence refusal notices containing 34,996 individual reasons. 32,095 were confidently assigned a primary theme; 2,901 remain unclassified and are excluded from the percentages. The NPPF references are our crosswalk to the current 12 December 2024 framework, not a claim that every council quoted those exact paragraphs.
Related — follow the thread
Sources & method
Approval rates computed from decided applications by borough on the canonical record. A borough's rate is approvals ÷ (approvals + refusals); the ranked list orders by approval rate, lowest first. Refusal themes are classified from verbatim grounds in high-confidence parsed decision notices, with one primary theme per individual reason. The current NPPF database is sourced paragraph-by-paragraph from GOV.UK's 12 December 2024 framework; its links here are a transparent analytical crosswalk. Historical notices may have been determined under earlier NPPF editions.