Planning permission – how it works

Planning update 15 September 2025

Following recent council-wide IT maintenance and system downtime, we have cleared the majority of our case backlog. As a result, we are able to offer from Monday 15 September 2025 a normal pre-application advice service with a small change. For pre-application advice on non-major applications, we are only providing written advice. This means we will not undertake site visits or hold meetings (either online or in person). We will review the provision of our service again by 30 September.

At present, we’re working approximately 7 working days behind our usual processing times for planning applications.

Whilst we will endeavour to meet our normal time scales of 25 working days (5 weeks) for non-major application work and within 30 working days (6 weeks) for major application work this may not be possible in all cases.

At this time, we are unable to offer pre-application advice for tree works.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience and understanding.