Bromley Council has faced setbacks in planning appeals where officer recommendations were overturned, according to a recent Development Control Committee meeting. A report presented at the meeting analysed appeal decisions from the 2024/25 financial year, revealing that all allowed appeals stemmed from cases where the committee overruled the initial recommendations made by planning officers.

The Planning Appeals Update presented to the committee on Thursday, 27 November 2025, highlighted the council's overall appeal performance and compared it with neighbouring boroughs. The report noted that while the number of planning appeals lodged remained steady between 240 and 253 from FY22/23 to FY24/25, a significant portion of allowed appeals resulted from overturned officer recommendations. The Councillor Planning Application Call Ins report indicates that applications where the committee overturns officer recommendations are more likely to be subject to successful appeals.

Of the 189 appeal decisions issued by the Planning Inspectorate (PINs) in FY24/25, 57 appeals were allowed. The report indicated that 173 of these decisions related to delegated decisions, while 16 were committee decisions. Crucially, all allowed appeals originated from cases where the officer recommendation was overturned at committee.

The Planning Appeals Update report notes that the government measures councils on their performance in relation to their 'speed' and 'quality' of decision making. The quality of decision making is based upon the percentage of 'major' and 'non major' applications allowed at appeal as a proportion of applications determined by the Council.

For the period between October 2022 – September 2024:

  • 2.2% of total applications determined for 'non major' schemes allowed at appeal
  • 5.9% of 'major' applications allowed at appeal

The report states that Council's that have over 10% of major and non-major applications allowed at appeal may be at risk of government intervention... Bromley's figures are well below the MHCLG 10% designation threshold, and this reflects the 'quality' of the decision-making across the planning service.

Bromley's appeal performance is in line with the majority of similar London boroughs, according to the Planning Appeals Update.

The Planning Appeals Update report notes that there is no dedicated budget for defending appeals, but a future report will give consideration to establishing an appeals budget for FY2025/26 to mitigate financial risk. The report also mentions that planning appeals can result in expenditure to the Council in the form of cost awards against the Council if either procedurally or substantively decision-making is deemed to result in 'unreasonable behaviour'.