Evidence/London Small Sites/Westminster

Westminster

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.

426 applications · 311 decided · 79% approved Data to Mar 2026 Release August 2026
Applications logged
426
Full, householder and minor resi since Mar 2023
Decided so far
311
245 approved, 66 refused, 35 withdrawn
Approval rate
79%
Roughly two in three decided applications
Typical time to decide
10 weeks
Median determination time across all small sites

Westminster, area by area

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

St John's Wood & Maida Vale 22 Paddington & North Westminster 54 Marylebone 51 Bayswater & Lancaster Gate 55 Mayfair & West End 62 St James's & Whitehall 23 Knightsbridge & Belgravia 25 Pimlico & Victoria 19 Approval rate 64% 90%
Spotlight

St John's Wood & Maida Vale

Decisions
22
Approved
14
Refused
8
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 Westminster’s sub-areas as defined in the council’s own planning framework.

Marylebone approves 90% of applications. St John's Wood & Maida Vale, closer to 64%. Same borough, same policy, 26 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 Westminster, but it's mid-terrace that sees the highest approval rate.

Approved Refused Bar length = sample size (max n=127)
Conversion
77%n=127
Demolish & rebuild
75%n=71
Mid-terrace
83%n=23
Extension
77%n=22
Infill
47%n=15
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
Extension, rear, side or upward additions creating a new unit
Infill, new build on small pockets of land

Is Westminster 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 79% '23 Q1 · 50% · n=2 '23 Q2 · 75% · n=20 '23 Q3 · 63% · n=19 '23 Q4 · 83% · n=18 '24 Q1 · 83% · n=23 '24 Q2 · 75% · n=28 '24 Q3 · 85% · n=34 '24 Q4 · 66% · n=29 '25 Q1 · 75% · n=24 '25 Q2 · 78% · n=37 '25 Q3 · 83% · n=36 '25 Q4 · 89% · n=27 '26 Q1 · 92% · n=13 '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 Westminster'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 Westminster 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 Westminster 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.