London Borough of Tower Hamlets

How Tower Hamlets 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 223 applications tracked Window: Jan 2023 to Mar 2026 7 areas, 4 scheme types

Applications logged

223

Full, householder and minor resi since Jan 2023

Decided so far

169

88 approved, 81 refused, 20 withdrawn

Approval rate

52%

Just over half of decided applications

Typical time to decide

8 weeks

Median determination time across all small sites

Tower Hamlets, area by area

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

Spotlight

Bethnal Green

Decisions

Approved

Refused

Approval rate

63%

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

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

Bow approves 70% of applications. Limehouse & Mile End, closer to 8%. Same borough, same policy, 62 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 Tower Hamlets, but it's demolish & rebuild that sees the highest approval rate.

Approved Refused Bar length = sample size (max n=63)

Conversion

43%n=63

Demolish & rebuild

72%n=32

Extension

50%n=22

Mid-terrace

41%n=17

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

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

Mid-terrace, insertion into the middle of a terrace

Why applications fail in Tower Hamlets

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

Design 30%

Open 17%

Other 14%

Policy 14%

Transport 10%

Amenity 8%

Design quality, bulk, massing, appearance 30

Open space, loss of garden or green space 17

Other, mixed reasons 14

Policy, affordable housing, density targets 14

Transport, parking, safety, access 10

Amenity, overlooking, daylight, noise 8

Delegated process 4

Heritage, conservation areas, listed setting 3

Flood risk 0

Infrastructure, access, parking, drainage 0

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 200 reasons extracted from refused decision notices.

In Tower Hamlets, what gets a scheme refused is usually how it looks, not how many homes it adds.

Thinking about a specific site?

The dashboard gives you the borough picture. If you have a particular address in mind, we can tell you what the comparable decisions say about your odds, density and capacity.

Request a Site Assessment → See other boroughs

Data sources & method

Applications. Sourced from the Greater London Authority (GLA) Planning Datahub and Tower Hamlets 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 Site Assessment. See our Terms of Use for full details on how this data is compiled and the limits of its use.