Planning permission in Buckinghamshire
What actually happens to planning applications decided by Buckinghamshire Council: approval rates, decision times, appeal odds and the development plan they are judged against. Figures cover 18,738 applications decided in the two years to July 2026, from the council's public planning register.
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How long does planning permission take in Buckinghamshire?
Half of decided applications took 56 days or less from validation to decision. The middle 50% of applications took between 47 and 83 days, and 55.4% were decided inside the 8-week statutory target for minor applications. Complex or contested schemes take longer.
The Buckinghamshire local plan
Buckinghamshire has no single adopted local plan: as a unitary authority created in 2020 from four former districts, its statutory development plan is the four inherited district plan sets, each covering only its own part of the unitary - the Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan 2013-2033 (adopted 2021) for the north and central area, the Wycombe District Local Plan (adopted 2019) with retained policies of the Delivery and Site Allocations Plan (2013) for the west, the Chiltern Core Strategy (adopted 2011) with saved Chiltern District Local Plan 1997 policies for the east, and the South Bucks Core Strategy (adopted 2011) with saved South Bucks District Local Plan 1999 policies for the south. These sit alongside the county-wide Buckinghamshire Minerals and Waste Local Plan 2016-2036 (adopted 2019) and around 53 made neighbourhood plans.
The emerging Local Plan for Buckinghamshire (LP4B) is not yet adopted; Regulation 18 consultation closed in October 2025, and a February 2026 Ministerial intervention letter directed an accelerated timetable with Regulation 19 publication from July 2026 and submission for examination by the end of December 2026. Once published, the Regulation 19 version is a material consideration carrying only limited weight under NPPF paragraph 48, and it plans for around 95,500 homes to about 2045. The earlier joint Chiltern and South Bucks Local Plan 2036 was withdrawn in November 2020 and carries no weight.
What tends to shape decisions here: Metropolitan Green Belt covers most of the Chiltern and South Bucks areas and the southern Wycombe area, while the Chilterns National Landscape (AONB) crosses all four former-district areas, so major development in either is tightly constrained. The Burnham Beeches Special Area of Conservation imposes a 500m no-net-new-dwellings zone and a 5.6km mitigation zone across the South Bucks and Chiltern areas, with air quality management areas in High Wycombe and flood risk in the Thames, Colne, Thame and Wye valleys. No former-district area can currently demonstrate a five year housing land supply, with the East and South areas under one year, so the NPPF tilted balance is engaged council-wide on unconstrained sites, though the Green Belt, National Landscape and SAC frequently disapply it.
Source: decisions published on the Buckinghamshire Council public planning register, two years to July 2026. Approval rate = approvals divided by approvals plus refusals; withdrawn applications and other outcomes are excluded. We track 66,003 Buckinghamshire applications in total. Plan facts as of July 2026; always check the council's own pages for the latest position.
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