The Planning Inspectorate’s Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26 has today been published.
It tells the story of a year in which PINS made 19,600 decisions, granted permission on appeal for 23,000 homes to be built, and cut the open appeals caseload from 11,400 to 9,400 cases.
Local plan examinations that once took 31 months to complete now take 19 and every statutory deadline on nationally significant infrastructure projects was met.
The impact of those decisions and recommendations is felt by the families waiting to move into new homes, the young people getting the chance to get on the property ladder and the communities benefiting from reliable energy and transport.
Breaking new ground
This was also a year of landmark moments. The inspectorate stood up an entirely new Crown Development Application service in around six months, deciding its first case in just eight weeks from inquiry announcement to decision.
The GOV.UK digital appeals service opened to all local planning authorities across England providing a more intuitive, secure, and resilient experience for appellants, agents, and local authorities. We continue to make it even better and more customer focused.
We also shared vital information on reform and changes to the planning system with our topic experts taking part in free public webinars reaching over 17,000 planning stakeholders.
Investing in people
Throughout 2025/26 we continued to progress our three-year Strategic People Plan to deliver our ambition that, by March 2027, the Inspectorate will be ‘an even better place to work, that values and builds the expertise of its workforce’.
This year saw us grow at a rate unseen in previous years, with our colleague numbers increasing by 9% between April 2025 and March 2026 as we attracted and retained many highly talented colleagues to our organisation. Our retention rate sits at 91%.
The year ahead
In his foreword Interim Chief Executive Graham Stallwood praised the strong collaborative work of colleagues as he looked ahead to the final year of the inspectorate’s strategic plan
He said
None of this happens by chance. It takes dedicated people, strong partnerships, and a clear sense of what we are here to do. At the Inspectorate we fully understand the importance of what we are striving to achieve, and the effect we can have on the government’s ambitions.
In 2026/27, we will build on the progress we have made by continuing to improve the timeliness of our decisions while maintaining quality, investing in our people, supporting the wider system to thrive, and using digital innovation to strengthen each of the five services we run.
As we head into the final year of this strategy, we are well placed to finish what we set out to accomplish back in 2024.