Planning permission in Dover
What actually happens to planning applications decided by Dover District Council: approval rates, decision times, appeal odds and the development plan they are judged against. Figures cover 3,393 applications decided in the two years to August 2026, from the council's public planning register.
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How long does planning permission take in Dover?
Half of decided applications took 55 days or less from validation to decision. The middle 50% of applications took between 40 and 76 days, and 64.3% were decided inside the 8-week statutory target for minor applications. Complex or contested schemes take longer.
The Dover local plan
The development plan is the Dover District Local Plan to 2040 (adopted October 2024), a single up to date document covering the spatial strategy, site allocations and development management policies, plus three made neighbourhood plans at Langdon, Ash and Worth.
None. The Local Plan was adopted recently and no replacement is in preparation, so there is no emerging policy to weigh.
What tends to shape decisions here: Dover is one of the few authorities where the plan is genuinely current, so proposals are judged on the plan's own terms. Delivery passes the Housing Delivery Test at 106 per cent and the plan demonstrated a 6.3 year housing land supply on adoption, so the tilted balance is not engaged on housing grounds. Codes from the superseded 2010 Core Strategy and 2015 allocations plan still circulate in older reports and are no longer current policy. The Kent Downs National Landscape, the coast and Dover's dense heritage are the substantive constraints.
If Dover says no: appeal odds
Between 2021 and 2025 the Planning Inspectorate overturned 25.9% of appealed Dover refusals (36 of 139 decided appeals). The national average is 31.1%. More detail, including how Dover ranks nationally: planning appeals in Dover.
Source: decisions published on the Dover District Council public planning register, two years to August 2026. Approval rate = approvals divided by approvals plus refusals; withdrawn applications and other outcomes are excluded. We track 13,608 Dover applications in total. Plan facts as of July 2026; always check the council's own pages for the latest position.
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