Hammersmith and Fulham takes a median 106 days to approve a small site application; the longest in London. Yet its refusal rate is just 23.2%, among the lowest. The borough says yes, but makes you wait. Budget for 3.5 months of holding costs, not two.
If you are financing a small-site acquisition in Hammersmith & Fulham, the planning risk is not refusal. It is time. The borough has one of the best approval rates in London and the worst determination times. That combination creates a specific financial problem.
106-day median approval — longest in London, lowest refusal
Across 345 decided small-site applications in Hammersmith & Fulham between January 2023 and March 2026, the median time to approval was 106 days. The London-wide median sits around 65 days. H&F is the slowest borough for approvals in the capital.
For context: the next slowest boroughs — Merton and Hillingdon — come in at 92 days each. H&F is a full two weeks beyond them.
The distribution is heavily skewed. The 75th percentile for approvals is 218 days — over seven months. The 90th percentile reaches 348 days, nearly a full year. One in ten approved applications in H&F takes close to twelve months to determine.
Refusals, by contrast, arrive far more quickly. The median refusal time is 60 days. That 46-day gap between the median approval and median refusal is the largest in London. The borough reaches a negative decision roughly six weeks faster than a positive one.
This asymmetry is not explained by application complexity. It persists across site types. Conversions take the longest at 129 days median. Backland schemes follow at 110 days. Mid-terrace development sits at 101 days. Even demolish-and-rebuild — the most straightforward typology in terms of the planning question — takes 96 days.
Meanwhile, the approval rate is 76.8% (n=345), placing H&F seventh in London. The refusal rate of 23.2% is comfortably below the London average. Officers and committees are not hostile. They are slow.
The statutory target for minor applications is 8 weeks (56 days). Even the median refusal in H&F only just meets this. The median approval overshoots it by 50 days.
What accounts for the delay? The data cannot answer this definitively, but several features of the borough are consistent with it. H&F has a high concentration of conservation areas and listed buildings. Officer caseloads may be high relative to the team size. And the borough’s proximity to central London means applications may involve more complex neighbour consultation and design review processes.
A finance cost problem, not a planning risk problem
The practical consequence is a finance cost problem, not a planning risk problem.
Take a worked example. A developer acquires a site in Fulham for £1.5 million, financed at 7.5% per annum. The London median determination would see a decision in roughly 65 days. In H&F, the median approval takes 106 days — 41 extra days, or just under six weeks.
At a daily interest rate of 0.0205%, those 41 days add approximately £12,600 in holding costs. That is before factoring in any extension of time agreement or committee referral, both of which push determination further out. At the 75th percentile (218 days), the additional finance cost over the London median balloons to approximately £47,000.
For a site appraisal, the adjustment is not to the probability of consent — that is actually favourable. The adjustment is to the programme. Model 106 days as the base case for approval, not 56 or 65. Build the P75 scenario (218 days) into the downside. And structure the finance facility with enough headroom that a slow positive outcome does not trigger a covenant breach.
The 46-day gap between approval and refusal times also has a monitoring implication. In most boroughs, silence after eight weeks is ambiguous. In H&F, silence after eight weeks is more likely to precede approval than refusal. The borough tends to refuse promptly and approve slowly.
What determination times do not reveal
Determination times are measured from validation to decision notice. They do not capture pre-application periods, nor do they distinguish between delays caused by the authority and delays caused by the applicant (amendments, additional information requests, extensions of time). Some of the 106-day median may reflect applicant-side negotiation, not just council-side processing.
The data also cannot tell you whether determination times are trending better or worse. A quarterly breakdown would reveal that — but is beyond the scope of this article.
The full H&F analysis — including type-by-type determination distributions, officer workloads, and area-level patterns — is in the Hammersmith & Fulham Borough Intelligence Report.