Evidence/London Small Sites/Tower Hamlets

Tower Hamlets

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.

211 applications · 164 decided · 52% approved Data to Feb 2026 Release August 2026

Applications logged

211

Full, householder and minor resi since Mar 2023

Decided so far

164

85 approved, 79 refused, 20 withdrawn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

64%

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 68% of applications. Limehouse & Mile End, closer to 8%. Same borough, same policy, 60 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=62)

Conversion

44%n=62

Demolish & rebuild

71%n=31

Extension

48%n=21

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, policy accounts for the biggest slice at 17%.

Policy 17%

Space 17%

Transport 13%

Loss 12%

Heritage 10%

Design 9%

Insufficient 9%

Policy, land use, affordable housing, principle of development 17

Space standards, unit and room sizes, ceiling heights, private outdoor space 17

Transport and parking, parking, highway safety, cycle storage 13

Loss of existing use, commercial, employment or community floorspace 12

Heritage, conservation areas, listed buildings 10

Design quality, bulk, massing, appearance, materials 9

Insufficient information, missing reports, surveys or assessments 9

Neighbour amenity, overlooking, loss of light, privacy, noise 7

Infrastructure, drainage, energy, biodiversity 3

Daylight and sunlight, assessed against BRE guidance 1

Read as: “Of every 100 reasons cited in a refusal, 17 relate to policy.” A single refusal often names two or more reasons. Based on 198 reasons extracted from refused decision notices.

In Tower Hamlets, most refusals come down to policy, not the design itself.

Is Tower Hamlets getting busier?

Decisions per quarter have grown 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 Tower Hamlets'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 Tower Hamlets 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 — Tower Hamlets’s mix-adjusted differential is −8.8 points.

All research →

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: 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.