How long a renewable planning decision actually takes

Across 1572 decided applications, the median was 99 days from lodging to decision. One in ten took longer than 329 days, and the longest took 1117. The gap between them is 5.6×, on the same statutory clock.

By planning authority

Fastest first. Every median is shown with the number of decisions it is calculated from — a median over twenty-odd applications moves when one of them stalls, and that is worth seeing rather than smoothing over.

Authorities with fewer than 20 decided applications are not listed: a median over a handful of cases describes those cases, not the authority. 27 of 31 are shown.

By technology

The single biggest factor is a request for further information

Where a planning authority asked for further information, the median decision took 196 days. Where it did not, the median was 54 days — 3.6× the difference.

How often that happens varies as much as the timings do: 20% of decided applications in Donegal County Council against 68% in Monaghan County Council.

This looks like a bigger factor than which county an application is in. Without a request, the median in almost every authority is close to 54 days. So much of the variation in the table above is not councils deciding at different speeds — it is councils asking for further information at different rates.

Counted across 29 planning authorities. Cork City Council, Cork County Council record no further-information requests at all — a field they do not populate rather than something they never do — so they are left out of this comparison entirely. The comparison is between applications that were decided; it describes what happened to them and is not a statement about any application still in the system.

What this is, and what it is not

It is a record of what happened. Every figure is the time between the date an application was received and the date it was decided, as both are published in the planning register. Nothing here is a forecast: this site does not predict the duration or the outcome of any particular application.

It counts decided applications only. Of 2258 projects tracked, 686 have no decision time because they have no decision — most were never decided at all, and the rest were withdrawn or are still live. An application still waiting is not a fast one.

Dates come from the national planning register and An Coimisiún Pleanála's case register. A decision recorded as taking a day or less is excluded: measured 2026-09-08, ten records do so and every one is a register placeholder or an error rather than a same-day decision.