Evidence/London Small Sites/Hammersmith and Fulham

Hammersmith and Fulham

Small residential planning decisions from January 2023 onwards, coded from the council’s own register to the same method used in all 33 London planning authorities.

420 applications · 318 decided · 75% approved Data to Feb 2026 Release August 2026
Applications logged
420
Full, householder and minor resi since Mar 2023
Decided so far
318
240 approved, 78 refused, 36 withdrawn
Approval rate
75%
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.

Shepherd's Bush & White City 70 Hammersmith 45 Brook Green & West Kensington 58 Fulham North 18 Fulham Central 92 Fulham South & Sands End 15 Hurlingham & Palace 20 Approval rate 64% 87%
Spotlight

Shepherd's Bush & White City

Decisions
70
Approved
55
Refused
15
Approval rate
79%
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 64%. Same borough, same policy, 23 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=97)
Conversion
61%n=97
Demolish & rebuild
84%n=55
Mid-terrace
92%n=50
Mixed use
87%n=38
Backland
84%n=31
Infill
82%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
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

Why applications fail in Hammersmith and Fulham

Of every hundred reasons cited in refused decisions in Hammersmith and Fulham, transport and parking accounts for the biggest slice at 29%.

Transport and parking, parking, highway safety, cycle storage 29
Permitted development, prior approval conditions not met 16
Space standards, unit and room sizes, ceiling heights, private outdoor space 13
Design quality, bulk, massing, appearance, materials 11
Neighbour amenity, overlooking, loss of light, privacy, noise 8
Insufficient information, missing reports, surveys or assessments 8
Flood risk 5
Heritage, conservation areas, listed buildings 3
Policy, land use, affordable housing, principle of development 3
Daylight and sunlight, assessed against BRE guidance 3
Read as: “Of every 100 reasons cited in a refusal, 29 relate to transport and parking.” A single refusal often names two or more reasons. Based on 212 reasons extracted from refused decision notices.

In Hammersmith and Fulham, parking and transport concerns account for more refusals than any other reason.

Is Hammersmith and Fulham getting busier?

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

Decisions per quarter
Approval rate (%)
0 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% borough avg 75% '23 Q1 · 60% · n=5 '23 Q2 · 67% · n=15 '23 Q3 · 62% · n=16 '23 Q4 · 74% · n=23 '24 Q1 · 58% · n=24 '24 Q2 · 75% · n=20 '24 Q3 · 76% · n=37 '24 Q4 · 77% · n=22 '25 Q1 · 88% · n=24 '25 Q2 · 97% · n=30 '25 Q3 · 86% · n=22 '25 Q4 · 73% · n=37 '26 Q1 · 48% · n=25 '23 Q1 '23 Q2 '23 Q3 '23 Q4 '24 Q1 '24 Q2 '24 Q3 '24 Q4 '25 Q1 '25 Q2 '25 Q3 '25 Q4 '26 Q1
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.

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. Source: Planning London Datahub, Greater London Authority. Method.

About these figures

The figures describe decided applications for one to nine homes. They show what has happened in Hammersmith and Fulham over the period covered; they do not predict the outcome of an individual application, and no approval probability is offered for any site or scheme.

Sample sizes are shown with the findings. Where the available evidence is too thin for a result to carry meaning, it is withheld or marked accordingly.

Research using this evidence

All research →

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: October 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. See our Terms of Use for full details on how this data is compiled and the limits of its use.