Which councils actually approve renewable schemes?
Before you pick a site, it helps to know whether the planning authority says yes — and how long it takes. These figures are computed from recorded planning outcomes in the government's Renewable Energy Planning Database, for every UK authority. Not a model, not an estimate: what actually happened.
Solar →
Ground-mounted and large rooftop solar schemes of roughly 150 kW and above.
⚡ Fastest to decide
🚧 Lowest approval rate
All 298 authorities with 5+ solar decisions
Battery storage →
Grid-scale battery energy storage (BESS), including schemes co-located with generation.
⚡ Fastest to decide
🚧 Lowest approval rate
All 137 authorities with 5+ battery storage decisions
Onshore wind →
Onshore wind projects, from single turbines to large arrays.
⚡ Fastest to decide
🚧 Lowest approval rate
All 75 authorities with 5+ onshore wind decisions
Which councils approve solar farms most often?
Approval rates for solar are high across the UK — most planning authorities with a meaningful caseload approve well over 80% of the solar applications they decide. The differences that matter in practice are speed and consistency: median time from application to decision varies from under two months in the fastest authorities to well over a year in the slowest. Both figures are computed per authority on this site from recorded outcomes in the government Renewable Energy Planning Database.
Is onshore wind harder to get consented than solar in England?
Yes, markedly — and the data shows it rather than asserting it. Across UK authorities the approval rate for onshore wind sits far below solar and battery storage, and median decision times are several times longer. That gap is the practical legacy of the restrictive policy tests applied to onshore wind in England for much of the last decade.
Where does this data come from?
The Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD), published quarterly by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero under the Open Government Licence. It records renewable schemes of roughly 150 kW and above with their planning authority, application reference, capacity, and the full date ladder of submission, refusal, appeal and consent. We compute approval rates and decision times directly from those recorded outcomes.
What are the limits of this data?
REPD covers schemes of roughly 150 kW and above, so small rooftop installations are absent. It is published quarterly, so the most recent weeks of activity will not appear. It records outcomes but not refusal REASONS, so we never claim to explain why a scheme failed — landscape and cumulative-impact judgements, the most common drivers of refusal, are not in any open dataset. Counts for authorities with only a handful of decisions are statistically weak and we say so on the page.
Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD), Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Open Government Licence v3.0 — extract 2026 Q1. Approval rate counts decided applications only (approved ÷ approved+refused); withdrawn and undecided schemes are excluded. A permission later expired still counts as approved, because the authority did grant consent. REPD covers schemes of roughly 150 kW and above and does not record refusal reasons.
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