What Happens If Planning Is Refused, and What Happens While It Is Being Decided

Your position does not change. Under our option agreement the planning work is paid for and run by us, at our own cost and risk, so a refusal is our problem to solve and not a bill for you. The land stays in your name. You keep farming it, grazing it or letting it as you did before. Nothing is owed to us, whether the application cost a few thousand pounds or a great deal more.

The agreement is written around the planning process itself, not around the calendar. While a planning application or an appeal is being decided, it continues until that decision is made. Nothing is asked of you when a refusal arrives: there is no form to sign, no fee to pay and no deadline for you to meet. If permission is secured, we complete the purchase and you receive the agreed price. If it is not achieved, the agreement ends and you keep your land.

That is the whole of your exposure, and it helps to see it stage by stage.

The rest of this guide is about the middle rows: what a refusal is, what can be done about it, and how long each step takes.

A refusal is a decision by the local planning authority, the council, that the application as submitted should not be granted. It comes as a written decision notice, and the law requires that notice to set out the council's reasons in full. Government guidance says a refusal must state clearly and precisely the full reasons and specify every policy in the development plan that is relevant to the decision. Those reasons are the most important document in the whole process, because everything that follows is an answer to them.

There are two ways a council reaches a decision. Most applications are decided by a planning officer under delegated powers: the council has handed the decision to its staff, as the Local Government Act 1972 allows, and the same guidance says effective delegation is in the public interest. Larger or more contested schemes go to the planning committee, a group of elected councillors who vote in public after hearing from the officer, the applicant and objectors. A committee can refuse a scheme its own officer recommended for approval.

A committee refusal is not weaker in law than an officer refusal, but it can be weaker in substance. Where the officer's report found the scheme acceptable and the committee disagreed, the reasons given at the meeting have to stand up on their own, and an inspector will read the officer's report alongside them. The guidance is also clear that local opposition or support is not in itself a ground for refusing or granting permission. A refusal built mainly on the strength of feeling in the village is one an appeal can test. The government's guidance on appeal costs lists, as unreasonable behaviour by a council, failing to produce evidence to support each reason for refusal, and making vague, generalised or inaccurate assertions about a scheme's impact that no objective analysis supports. A council that refuses on that kind of ground risks being ordered to pay the appellant's costs.

Reading the Reasons

Reasons for refusal fall into three broad kinds, and the kind decides the route.

• Principle. The council says homes should not be built here at all: the site is outside the settlement boundary, in open countryside, or the council believes it has enough housing land. These reasons turn on how national and local policy is read, and where the council has read it wrongly, an appeal is the usual answer.
• Technical. Access, visibility at the junction, drainage, flood risk, ecology, noise or the effect on a listed building. These can usually be answered with a redesign or more survey work, and an amended scheme is often the quicker route. The same costs guidance warns councils against refusing on a ground that suitable planning conditions could have dealt with.
• Missing agreement. The scheme was acceptable but the Section 106 agreement, which secures affordable housing and contributions, was not completed in time. These are answered by completing the agreement, either with a fresh application or, under the appeal procedure that began in April 2026, by sending the completed agreement in with the appeal.

When a refusal arrives, our planners read the notice, the officer's report and the committee minutes, and we tell you plainly which kind it is and what we intend to do.

There are three: an amended scheme, an appeal, and the local plan. They are not exclusive, and more than one can be pursued for the same land. Government guidance suggests that before appealing, an applicant should first consider going back to the council to see whether changes would make the scheme acceptable, after which a revised application can be submitted. Here is how we work through them.

1. Read the decision against the officer's report. Where the officer recommended approval, the committee's reasons are the target. Where the officer recommended refusal, the report tells us which policies were applied and how the balance was struck.
2. Decide whether the reasons can be answered by design. A technical reason, such as the position of the access or the drainage strategy, can often be fixed. An amended scheme is prepared, with any further survey work, and submitted as a fresh application.
3. Decide whether the reasons are wrong in policy. If the council has misread the August 2026 framework, understated its housing shortfall or refused on principle where national policy supports homes, an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate is prepared. Most planning appeals must be received within six months of the date on the decision notice. The shorter twelve-week limit applies to householder and minor commercial appeals, not to applications for new homes, and an appeal received late is not accepted.
4. Choose the procedure. Written representations, a hearing or an inquiry, depending on the size of the scheme and how far the parties are apart. The Inspectorate makes the final choice.
5. Keep the local plan route open. Where a council is preparing a new plan, the land can be put forward through its call for sites at the same time, so that a refusal under today's policies does not close the door to an allocation under tomorrow's.

A Note on the Fee for a Resubmission

For many years a refused application could be resubmitted once within twelve months without paying the council's fee again, the so-called free go. That exemption, regulation 9 of the 2012 planning fees regulations, was removed on 6 December 2023, so an amended scheme now carries a full application fee, a real sum before any consultant is paid. Under our agreement it is paid by us, like every other planning cost.

Each route has a different clock. An amended application restarts the council's decision period, 8 weeks for a smaller scheme and 13 weeks for a major one, though in practice councils and applicants agree extensions. An appeal runs on the Inspectorate's timetable, set out below. The agreement continues through all of it.

An appeal asks an independent planning inspector, appointed by the Secretary of State, to decide the application afresh. The inspector weighs the scheme against the development plan and national policy, exactly as the council should have done. The inspector can allow the appeal and grant permission, with conditions, or dismiss it.

The Three Procedures

Written representations is the simplest: both sides set out their case on paper, the inspector visits the site and issues a written decision. A hearing is a round-table discussion led by the inspector, used where the issues need questioning but not cross-examination. An inquiry is the full formal procedure, with barristers and expert witnesses, reserved for the largest or most contested schemes. Appellants say which they think fits, but the Inspectorate decides and can change the procedure during the appeal.

What Changed on 1 April 2026

For applications submitted on or after 1 April 2026, the Inspectorate expanded its expedited written procedure, known as Part 1. Under Part 1 the appeal is decided on the papers that were before the council: the application, the officer's report, the committee minutes and the decision notice. The appellant submits reasons for appeal rather than a full statement of case, the council sends its documents within five working days, and the appellant may not add new evidence the council has not seen. The exception is an exceptional material change in circumstances, and the guide gives a relevant change in policy as one example. Neighbours and the parish council cannot send further comments at the appeal stage; anything they said to the council is forwarded to the inspector instead. The Inspectorate's procedural guide for appeals from April 2026 sets out which appeals fall into Part 1 and which go to the fuller Part 2 written procedure, or to a hearing or an inquiry.

For a landowner the practical effect is this. An appeal on the Part 1 route is leaner, but it is won or lost on the quality of the original application, because there is no second chance to add reports. That is one reason the surveys and design work before submission are done thoroughly, at our cost, rather than kept back for later.

How Long Appeals Take

The Planning Inspectorate publishes its own figures. For the twelve months to June 2026 it decided 19,190 appeals, and the time from a valid appeal to a decision was:

The gap between the median and the mean matters. Half of written appeals were decided inside about eighteen weeks, but the average is pushed past twenty-eight by a tail of slow cases. The Inspectorate's monthly page gives a more recent snapshot: for planning appeals decided in June 2026, the median was 17 weeks by written representations and 19 weeks by hearing, with inquiries at 27 weeks on a small sample it warns should be read with care. Preparation time before the appeal is lodged comes on top, and a hearing is usually fixed ten to fourteen weeks after the start date, an inquiry thirteen to sixteen.

How Often Appeals Succeed

The same release records that 31% of planning appeals were allowed between April and June 2026. The rate rises with the procedure: 29% by written representations, 53% at hearings and 57% at inquiries. That is unlikely to mean inquiries are kinder. The more likely reason is which cases reach them: larger schemes, argued with expert evidence, by appellants who judged the case worth the cost. We decide to appeal only where our planners see a realistic prospect, and when we do, we fund the procedure the case needs.

Who Pays for an Appeal

Government guidance is that the parties to an appeal normally meet their own expenses, and costs are awarded only where one side has behaved unreasonably and put the other to wasted expense. You are not a party to the appeal and nothing about it falls on you. The appellant is us, the cost of the barrister, the planner and the witnesses is ours, and if the Inspectorate were ever to award costs against the appellant, that would be ours too. Our guide to how long planning takes puts an appeal into the wider timeline from first call to completion.

A council has a set period to decide an application: 8 weeks for most schemes, 13 weeks for major development and 16 weeks where an environmental impact assessment is needed, unless a longer period is agreed in writing. If the period passes with no decision and no agreed extension, section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 gives the applicant a right to appeal against non-determination. The appeal must be made within six months of the end of the decision period.

Non-determination appeals are excluded from the expedited Part 1 procedure and follow the Part 2 written procedure, or a hearing or an inquiry. They are used carefully. Government guidance asks applicants first to find out from the council when a decision might be made, and expects a council that is going to miss its deadline to give the applicant a proper explanation. If an appeal does follow, the council has to explain why it did not decide in time and why permission would not have been granted, and a council that delayed without substantive reasons risks an award of costs if the appeal is allowed. Where a council has simply stopped engaging, the appeal is the remedy.

There is also a fee refund where an application drags on, under what the government calls the planning guarantee. It applies only if no non-determination appeal has been made.

The refund comes to us, as the applicant. For you, a slow council changes nothing. The agreement continues while the application is being decided, however long the council takes, and the land stays yours and in use throughout.

Whether a refusal can be overturned depends a great deal on national policy, and the August 2026 National Planning Policy Framework rewrote the rules for land outside settlement boundaries. The framework is written as numbered policies. Two of them matter most for land at the edge of a village.

Policy S4 covers land inside a settlement. Development proposals within settlements should be approved unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits. For an infill plot or a yard inside a village, that sets a high bar for a refusal: the harm has to substantially outweigh the benefits, judged against the national decision-making policies in the framework.

Policy S5 covers land outside a settlement. It lists the forms of development that should be approved there, and the one that matters for a field is land well related to a settlement and served by infrastructure, where unmet housing need is evidenced. A Housing Delivery Test result below 75% means need is treated as evidenced. A five-year supply shortfall is evidence of unmet need to be weighed, not an automatic finding. So a village-edge field stands on firmer ground in a district that is behind on delivery, and an inspector deciding an appeal applies the same test.

Policy S5 does not apply in the Green Belt, where grey belt has its own need test, usually shown by a supply short of five years or a delivery result below 75%, with the Golden Rules on larger schemes. Our guides to the August 2026 framework and grey belt land go through both routes in detail.

What This Looks Like in a Decision

An appeal decided on 4 September 2026 shows how an inspector works through a refusal on the edge of a village. Uttlesford District Council had refused outline permission for up to five homes on land west of The Cottage, Snakes Lane, at Ugley in Essex. The inspector found the site lay in open countryside. The homes would extend housing beyond the existing group rather than sit within it, so the scheme did not meet the part of policy S5 that allows limited infilling within groups of houses, and the site was not a suitable location for housing given its access to services.

Against that, the same land already had planning permission for three homes, through a permission in principle allowed on appeal in March 2025 and technical details approved by the council in September 2025. The inspector found the five-home scheme no more harmful than that fallback, which weighed heavily in its favour. The council could not demonstrate a five-year housing land supply, so the two extra homes counted as a benefit, if a small one. Despite some conflict with the development plan, the appeal was allowed, with nineteen conditions. The site visit was on 16 July 2026 and the decision followed seven weeks later.

Three lessons for a landowner sit in that decision. A conflict with policy is not the end of the matter: the inspector weighed it against everything else. A site's planning history counts, and an earlier permission on the same land can carry heavy weight. And the council's housing supply position went into the balance. The decision was reasoned paragraph by paragraph against policy, which is why a well-evidenced case from the start matters.

Planning is a public process, and a landowner who has not been through it before can be surprised by how much of it arrives in the post or appears on a lamp post. None of it needs action from you, but it helps to know what each item is.

Two things are worth saying about the comments stage. Objections are normal on any housing scheme, and a long list of them does not decide the application: the guidance is explicit that local opposition is not in itself a reason to refuse. And you may be approached by neighbours who have had the council's letter. You do not have to discuss the scheme with anyone, and it is fine to pass questions to us.

We keep you informed in writing at each stage: when the application is validated, when consultation closes, when the officer's report is published, after the committee, and after any decision. If anything about your land becomes public, you hear it from us first.

Very little that you would notice. Nothing is built, no ground is broken, and no fence moves. The land is farmed, grazed or let exactly as it was, and the income from it stays with you. The option is a right to buy once planning permission has been secured. It is not a lease and it does not give us possession.

The visible activity is survey work, and most of it happens before the application is submitted: a topographical surveyor with a GPS pole, an ecologist walking the hedges, an arboriculturist measuring trees, occasionally a mini digger opening a trial pit that is backfilled the same day. Every visit is arranged with you in advance and timed around stock and crops. Our guide to option agreements lists each survey and what it involves on the ground.

During the decision period itself, visits are rarer. The case officer may walk the site. If the scheme goes to appeal, the inspector will. Where a refusal turns on a technical point, a further survey may be needed for the amended scheme, for example a second season of ecology work or a drainage test, and that is arranged in the same way.

If you are considering a change on the land during this period, such as a new building, a long tenancy or a woodland or environmental scheme covering the fields, a quick call to us first keeps the application and the land in step. Day-to-day farming decisions need no call at all.

Planning not achieved means the agreement comes to an end without a planning permission having been secured. Until then, a refusal is a stage rather than an ending: the agreement continues while any planning application or appeal is being decided. A landowner deserves a straight answer when the end does come, and we give one, in writing.

When that happens, the agreement ends and three things follow.

• You keep the land. Nothing has changed in its ownership, its use or its value in your hands. Any option fee paid to you is yours to keep.
• You owe nothing. Not the council's fees, not the consultants, not the appeal. The cost and the risk were ours from the start, and the agreement does not change that at the end.
• Your title is cleared. The entry that protected the option at HM Land Registry is removed, so that the register shows your land free of it.

How the Title Entry Is Removed

When the option was signed it was protected on your title, usually by a notice. HM Land Registry's practice guide explains that a notice records that an interest is claimed, so that anyone dealing with the land knows about it, and the same guide sets out how a notice comes off. Where the option was protected by a unilateral notice, the beneficiary, which is us, applies to remove it on form UN2, with no fee. Where it was an agreed notice, an application on form CN1 is made with evidence that the interest has come to an end, and there is generally no fee for that either. Either way, our solicitors deal with it as part of closing the agreement, and your solicitor can confirm from an up-to-date copy of the register that the entry has gone.

The agreement sets out what happens to the surveys and reports prepared along the way. The refusal itself becomes part of the site's planning history, which government guidance says may be relevant to a later application. It does not stop one: national policy and a council's housing position both change over time, and the Ugley decision above was an application refused under one set of policies and decided on appeal under the next.

Landowners who have been offered a promotion agreement often ask what happens under it if planning is refused, and the fair answer is that on this one point the two routes are similar. Under most promotion agreements the promoter funds the planning work at its own risk, and if planning is not achieved the promoter's spending is written off rather than recovered from the landowner. That is the usual position, and our guide to promotion agreement fees and deductions explains how costs are treated when planning does succeed.

The differences lie in what happens around the refusal rather than at it. Under a promotion agreement the promoter is working towards a sale on the open market, so a refusal delays the point at which the land is valued and marketed, and the landowner's figure stays unknown until that sale. Under our option the price was agreed at the start, so a refusal delays completion but changes nothing about the number. And because we are buying the land ourselves, the decision to appeal or resubmit is ours to make and ours to fund. Under a promotion agreement the promoter usually makes and funds that decision too, and if planning later succeeds, the cost of the appeal or the second application is normally among the costs recovered from the sale proceeds before the landowner is paid.

The other common route, a conditional contract, usually suits land where planning already looks straightforward, such as an allocated site. On a field that has been refused once, the planning risk is exactly the thing a landowner wants to hand to someone else, and that is what an option does. Our comparison of option, promotion and outright sale sets the three side by side.

If a letter about your land has raised the question of what happens when planning does not go to plan, the simplest way to get a straight answer about your own field is a free desktop review. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.