How to object to a planning application

Get the timing right

Comments are invited during a consultation period, usually 21 days from when the application is published. Send yours inside that window.

Councils will often still accept a comment after the deadline if no decision has been issued, but they are not obliged to, and a late comment carries less weight because the officer has usually drafted their report.

Write about the right things

A planning officer can only take account of "material planning considerations". An objection built on anything else is recorded but carries no weight in the decision.

This is the single biggest reason objections fail. Passionate, detailed letters about the wrong things change nothing.

• Counts: overlooking and loss of privacy, loss of light or overshadowing, highway safety and access, parking, noise and disturbance, design and character, effect on a listed building or conservation area, trees and ecology, flood risk and drainage.
• Does not count: loss of property value, loss of a private view, competition with an existing business, boundary and ownership disputes, the applicant’s identity or character, or the fact that construction will be disruptive.

Be specific

Say what the effect is, on what, and why. "The proposed two-storey rear extension would sit three metres from my kitchen window and remove direct light from mid-afternoon onwards" carries weight. "This will ruin the street" does not.

Refer to the policy if you can. Council local plans are published online and their policies are numbered; quoting the relevant one makes the officer address it directly in their report.

Practical points

Objections must normally be made in your own name with an address, and they are published on the register. Anonymous comments are usually disregarded.

One well-argued letter is worth more than fifty identical form letters, which are typically counted as a single representation. If neighbours are objecting too, have each person write about the effect on them specifically.

Ask your ward councillor to "call in" the application if you want it decided by committee rather than by an officer. There is usually a deadline for this, and it is often earlier than the consultation deadline.

If it is approved anyway

There is no third-party right of appeal in England. If permission is granted you cannot appeal it, though you can raise a breach with the council’s enforcement team if what gets built differs from what was approved.

Conditions are enforceable. If a condition on hours of work or landscaping is not being met, that is worth reporting.