🗓 Submission Timing Intelligence
When is the best month — and weekday — to submit your planning application? Real approval-rate + decision-speed data from 25,848 dated decisions across UK LPAs.
📊 Gateshead Council
Months below refer to when you submit, not when the decision lands. Each application is bucketed by its received_date month — but the approval rate measures the final outcome, whenever it landed (60-90 days later typically). The lag is already baked into the signal: "submit in December = 100% approval" already accounts for the fact that those decisions arrive in Feb/March. The month-by-month table below shows the lag explicitly so you can see the full cycle.
⏱ Decision speed by application type
How long different application types actually take at Gateshead Council. Householder apps are statutorily 8 weeks; full/major are 13 weeks — but the real numbers usually drift. This is what the data says, not what the statute says.
→ Fastest: Discharge Conditions (81 days). Slowest: Full / Major (132 days).
| Application type | Decisions | Approval rate | Avg days | Range | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Householder | 89 | 97.8% | 90 d (13 wk) | 19–365 d | Filter ▸ |
| Full / Major | 61 | 83.6% | 132 d (19 wk) | 51–328 d | Filter ▸ |
| Discharge Conditions | 39 | 89.7% | 81 d (12 wk) | 3–337 d | Filter ▸ |
| Listed Building (low sample) | 7 | 100% | 142 d (20 wk) | 56–319 d | Filter ▸ |
| Prior Approval (low sample) | 3 | 100% | 59 d (8 wk) | 56–63 d | Filter ▸ |
| Advertisement (low sample) | 3 | 0% | 75 d (11 wk) | 54–115 d | Filter ▸ |
| Outline (low sample) | 1 | 100% | 323 d (46 wk) | 323–323 d | Filter ▸ |
| Change of Use (low sample) | 1 | 100% | 282 d (40 wk) | 282–282 d | ✕ clear |
ⓘ Month-by-month stats above are filtered to Change of Use only. The table above always shows all types so you can compare.
📅 Month-by-month breakdown — full submit→decide cycle
Each row shows the complete journey for applications received in that month: how long they took, when the decision actually landed, and what % were approved. The approval rate already accounts for everything that happens between submission and decision — the lag is part of the signal.
| Submit month | Decisions | Approval rate | Median lag | Decision typically lands in | Range |
|---|
Read across each row: submit in [month] → wait [median lag] → decision lands in [target month] → outcome [approval rate]. The approval rate is the final outcome of the whole cycle, not a snapshot.
🗓 Day-of-week patterns
| Day received | Decisions | Approval rate | Avg days |
|---|
📊 Data sources & freshness
Timing is a tactical edge, not strategic justification. Use alongside the constraint check + pattern fingerprint to make the case strong on substance, then time it to land well.
- planning_applications.received_date (updated Daily ingest)
25,848 dated decisions where both received_date and decision_type are known. Approval = approved/granted/permit. Sample size gating: months with fewer than 8 decisions excluded from best/worst recommendation. - Day-of-week patterns
Reflects when applicants choose to submit, which may correlate with applicant type (Monday = professional consultants; Friday = end-of-week DIY submissions). Causality is correlative not causal. - Decision-time outliers
Months showing 200+ day averages are flagged — they reflect older PINS-appeal-derived rows where determinations stretched over many months. Read the Jan/Feb/Nov/Dec numbers (largest samples) as the reliable benchmark.