Evidence/London Small Sites/Richmond upon Thames

Richmond upon Thames

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.

335 applications · 244 decided · 80% approved Data to Feb 2026 Release August 2026

Applications logged

335

Full, householder and minor resi since Feb 2023

Decided so far

244

194 approved, 50 refused, 15 withdrawn

Approval rate

80%

Roughly four in five decided applications

Typical time to decide

8 weeks

Median determination time across all small sites

Richmond upon Thames, area by area

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

Spotlight

Barnes & Mortlake

Decisions

Approved

Refused

Approval rate

60%

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

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

Kew approves 83% of applications. Barnes & Mortlake, closer to 60%. 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. conversions are both the most common route in Richmond upon Thames and the type with the highest approval rate.

Approved Refused Bar length = sample size (max n=103)

Conversion

86%n=103

Demolish & rebuild

70%n=40

Extension

76%n=33

Backland

58%n=12

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

Backland, new build on rear gardens or courtyard land

Why applications fail in Richmond upon Thames

Of every hundred reasons cited in refused decisions in Richmond upon Thames, policy accounts for the biggest slice at 22%.

Policy 22%

Insufficient 14%

Design 10%

Neighbour 9%

Transport 8%

Policy, land use, affordable housing, principle of development 22

Insufficient information, missing reports, surveys or assessments 14

Design quality, bulk, massing, appearance, materials 10

Neighbour amenity, overlooking, loss of light, privacy, noise 9

Transport and parking, parking, highway safety, cycle storage 8

Flood risk 7

Space standards, unit and room sizes, ceiling heights, private outdoor space 7

Infrastructure, drainage, energy, biodiversity 7

Heritage, conservation areas, listed buildings 5

Loss of existing use, commercial, employment or community floorspace 5

Read as: “Of every 100 reasons cited in a refusal, 22 relate to policy.” A single refusal often names two or more reasons. Based on 153 reasons extracted from refused decision notices.

In Richmond upon Thames, most refusals come down to policy, not the design itself.

Is Richmond upon Thames 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 Richmond upon Thames'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. 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 Richmond upon Thames 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.

Method Current release Compare other boroughs

Research using this evidence

Research Given what you received: the outcome differential — Richmond upon Thames’s mix-adjusted differential is +21.8 points.

All research →

Data sources & method

Applications. Sourced from the Greater London Authority (GLA) Planning Datahub and Richmond upon Thames 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.