London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

How Hammersmith and Fulham decides on small housing schemes

Every decision on sites of nine units or fewer, coded from the council's own register and refreshed each quarter. What gets built, what gets approved, and what trips applications up.

Last updated April 2026 443 applications tracked Window: Jan 2023 to Mar 2026 7 areas, 7 scheme types

Applications logged

443

Full, householder and minor resi since Jan 2023

Decided so far

328

248 approved, 80 refused, 36 withdrawn

Approval rate

76%

Roughly two in three decided applications

Typical time to decide

15 weeks

Median determination time across all small sites

Hammersmith and Fulham, area by area

Colour shows how often applications get approved. Numbers show how many were decided. Hover or tap an area for detail.

Spotlight

Shepherd's Bush & White City

Decisions

Approved

Refused

Approval rate

78%

Hover or tap any tile to see that area’s detail.

Tile positions are schematic, not to geographic scale. Each hex represents one of Hammersmith and Fulham’s sub-areas as defined in the council’s own planning framework.

Fulham South & Sands End approves 87% of applications. Hammersmith, closer to 66%. Same borough, same policy, 21 percentage points of difference.

Which kinds of schemes get approved?

Bar length shows how many of each type were decided. The split shows the share approved versus refused. Conversion is by far the most common route in Hammersmith and Fulham, but it's mid-terrace that sees the highest approval rate.

Approved Refused Bar length = sample size (max n=100)

Conversion

60%n=100

Demolish & rebuild

84%n=56

Mid-terrace

92%n=52

Mixed use

87%n=38

Backland

84%n=31

Infill

83%n=18

Extension

91%n=11

Scheme types with fewer than 10 decisions in the window are not shown here.

Conversion, dividing one home into flats

Demolish & rebuild, existing building replaced with new homes

Mid-terrace, insertion into the middle of a terrace

Mixed use, ground-floor commercial with homes above

Backland, new build on rear gardens or courtyard land

Infill, new build on small pockets of land

Extension, rear, side or upward additions creating a new unit

Why applications fail in Hammersmith and Fulham

Of every hundred reasons cited in refused decisions in Hammersmith and Fulham, design quality accounts for the biggest slice at 30%.

Design 30%

Transport 21%

Amenity 16%

Unit 10%

Permitted 10%

Design quality, bulk, massing, appearance 30

Transport, parking, safety, access 21

Amenity, overlooking, daylight, noise 16

Unit sizes, below space standards 10

Permitted development 10

Delegated process 4

Policy, affordable housing, density targets 4

Infrastructure, access, parking, drainage 4

Open space, loss of garden or green space 1

Read as: “Of every 100 reasons cited in a refusal, 30 relate to design quality.” A single refusal often names two or more reasons. Based on 67 reasons extracted from refused decision notices.

In Hammersmith and Fulham, what gets a scheme refused is usually how it looks, not how many homes it adds.

Is Hammersmith and Fulham getting busier?

Decisions per quarter have held roughly steady since 2023, and approval rates have drifted upward over the same window.

Decisions per quarter

Approval rate (%)

Hover any bar or dot for exact quarterly values. The most recent quarter may be partial while pending decisions work through.

Interrogate the data yourself

Every figure on this page comes from Hammersmith and Fulham's own planning decisions. We publish the underlying data so you can check it, replicate our findings, or use it in your own tools. Verify against the council's planning portal before relying on any record, and tell us if you spot a problem.

Download the data (Excel) CSV

Decided small-site applications, 1 to 9 units. Planning-decision layer only: Energy Performance Certificate, Land Registry and case-officer fields are held back. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Methodology.

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Data sources & method

Applications. Sourced from the Greater London Authority (GLA) Planning Datahub and Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s online planning register. Covers full planning, householder, and minor residential applications of nine units or fewer decided in the window shown above.

Decisions and timing. Outcomes and determination times are taken from the council’s published decision notices.

Refusal reasons. Extracted from refused decision notices that were publicly available. Not every refusal has a readable notice, so totals count all refusals but the reason breakdown covers only those we could read.

Scheme classification. Site types (conversion, demolish & rebuild, extension, and so on) are coded from application descriptions and drawings. Areas are mapped from postcodes and ward names using the council’s own sub-area definitions.

Update frequency. Refreshed quarterly. Next refresh: July 2026.

Nothing here is planning advice. Outcomes are historical and do not predict individual cases. Approval rates vary with site specifics, policy context, and case officer. For a read on a particular site, request a Red Line Review. See our Terms of Use for full details on how this data is compiled and the limits of its use.