Planning Approval Rate in Peak District National Park
Peak District National Park is close to the England average for planning permission: it approves 86.5% of applications and decides 92.1% of them within the statutory time limit, ranking #199 of 310 English authorities. This is the approval-rate record for Peak District National Park: how hard it is to get planning permission, how quickly the council decides, and how it compares with its neighbours, from official government statistics.
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Source: official MHCLG planning statistics (PS2), 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025. Based on 547 decisions (473 granted, 74 refused).
How Peak District National Park compares
| Peak District National Park | 86.5% |
| National Parks average | 91.2% |
| England average | 87% |
Peak District National Park is about average for England.
How hard is it to get planning permission in Peak District National Park?
Peak District National Park is a little stricter than the median English authority, granting 86.5% of the applications it decides (rank 199th of 310). That puts it close to the England average — 86.5% approved against an England average of 87%. Within National Parks it is the strictest of 10 local planning authorities, where the regional average is 91.2%. Refusals are fairly frequent here: 74 of its 547 decisions were refusals (13.5%). On the split by scale it is far tougher on major schemes than on small ones: 57.1% of major developments approved versus 86.4% of householder and other small-scale work, from 7 major decisions.
On timing it is about average on speed, deciding 92.1% of applications within the statutory period against 90.6% nationally. Its figures rest on a mid-sized caseload of 547 decisions over 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025, where the typical English authority decides around 783. It is stricter than its nearest National Parks peer by rank, Dartmoor National Park (86.8%). At the other end of National Parks, Northumberland National Park is the most approving, at 94.6%.
Compare Peak District National Park with nearby councils
Approval rates for other authorities in National Parks. See the full National Parks league table.
Approval rate by development scale in Peak District National Park
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Planning permission in Peak District National Park: common questions
Is it hard to get planning permission in Peak District National Park?
On the latest official figures Peak District National Park is close to the England average and a little stricter than the median English authority, approving 86.5% of the 547 applications it decided over 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025 against 87% for England.
What percentage of planning applications does Peak District National Park approve or refuse?
Refusals are fairly frequent here: 86.5% approved and 13.5% refused — 473 granted and 74 refused of 547 decisions, with major schemes approved at 57.1% and householder and other work at 86.4%.
How quickly does Peak District National Park decide planning applications?
On timing Peak District National Park is about average on speed: 92.1% of applications were decided within the statutory period — eight weeks for most, thirteen for major schemes — against 90.6% nationally.
Is Peak District National Park stricter than nearby councils?
Peak District National Park's 86.5% approval rate makes it the strictest of 10 authorities in National Parks, against a 91.2% regional average. Neighbouring Dartmoor National Park approves 86.8%.
Can I use Peak District National Park's approval rate to predict whether my application will be approved?
No — the approval rate is a historic average across every application Peak District National Park decided, not a prediction for any individual application; your outcome depends on the site, the proposal, local planning policy and any objections.
Methodology & limits
Approval, refusal and in-time rates come from the government's official PS2 planning application statistics (Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government), covering 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025. This dataset is England-only and published annually, so it lags live activity. Live figures are the applications PlanWatch has collected for Peak District National Park and are not a complete council register. Refusal reasons and delegated-vs-committee splits are not published in this data.
This is a historic average, not a prediction. It cannot tell you whether your application will be approved — that depends on your site, proposal, local policy and any objections.
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