Evidence/London Small Sites/Kensington and Chelsea
Kensington and Chelsea
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.
Kensington and Chelsea, area by area
Colour shows how often applications get approved. Numbers show how many were decided. Hover or tap an area for detail.
North Kensington
South Kensington approves 91% of applications. Chelsea, closer to 72%. Same borough, same policy, 19 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. conversions are both the most common route in Kensington and Chelsea and the type with the highest approval rate.
Why applications fail in Kensington and Chelsea
Of every hundred reasons cited in refused decisions in Kensington and Chelsea, heritage accounts for the biggest slice at 26%.
In Kensington and Chelsea, heritage and conservation carry more weight than elsewhere. Most refusals start there.
Is Kensington and Chelsea getting busier?
Decisions per quarter have grown since 2023, and approval rates have edged down over the same window.
Interrogate the data yourself
Every figure on this page comes from Kensington and Chelsea'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 Kensington and Chelsea 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
- Research Given what you received: the outcome differential — Kensington and Chelsea’s mix-adjusted differential is +15.1 points.
Applications. Sourced from the Greater London Authority (GLA) Planning Datahub and Kensington and Chelsea 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.