Planning permission in St Albans
What actually happens to planning applications decided by St Albans City & District Council: approval rates, decision times, appeal odds and the development plan they are judged against. Figures cover 5,589 applications decided in the two years to August 2026, from the council's public planning register.
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How long does planning permission take in St Albans?
Half of decided applications took 55 days or less from validation to decision. The middle 50% of applications took between 48 and 86 days, and 53.7% were decided inside the 8-week statutory target for minor applications. Complex or contested schemes take longer.
The St Albans local plan
The adopted Local Plan is the District Local Plan Review 1994, one of the oldest in England, and only the 91 policies saved by a 2007 Direction remain in force. Five made neighbourhood plans apply in their own parishes, and Hertfordshire County Council prepares the minerals and waste plans.
The St Albans Local Plan to 2041 was submitted for examination in November 2024 and its Main Modifications consultation ran in 2026. The council's published position is that it now carries significant weight as a material consideration, though it is not yet adopted and no adoption date is fixed.
What tends to shape decisions here: This is close to the strongest tilted balance position in England. The Housing Delivery Test result is 52 per cent, which triggers the presumption, and the council reports about 1.12 years of housing land supply against a standard method need of roughly 1,668 homes a year. The 1994 plan's housing policies expired in 2007, so there is no adopted housing requirement at all. Against that, Green Belt covers over 80 per cent of the district and remains the principal reason schemes still fail, and the Chilterns National Landscape and Roman Verulamium add heritage and landscape constraints.
If St Albans says no: appeal odds
Between 2021 and 2025 the Planning Inspectorate overturned 33.7% of appealed St Albans refusals (113 of 335 decided appeals). The national average is 31.1%. More detail, including how St Albans ranks nationally: planning appeals in St Albans.
Source: decisions published on the St Albans City & District Council public planning register, two years to August 2026. Approval rate = approvals divided by approvals plus refusals; withdrawn applications and other outcomes are excluded. We track 22,567 St Albans applications in total. Plan facts as of July 2026; always check the council's own pages for the latest position.
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