Self Storage Planning Applications in the UK: What the Council Records Show

As at 18 October 2026, a search of PlanIt, a free website that republishes council planning registers, for the phrase “self storage” finds 3,895 council register records whose description names it. PlanIt’s start dates for them run from 16 February 2000 to 14 October 2026, and they come from 359 authorities. They are records, not sites, and not a national total of self storage planning applications.

This guide is general information, not a forecast and not planning advice, and it covers the UK. A record is one entry in a council’s planning register, as PlanIt republishes it. Of the 3,895 records, 3,877 come from 356 UK planning authorities. This guide gives no approval rate, and its days are for England only.

We ran that search through PlanIt’s API overnight on 18 October 2026, kept the records whose description matches a rule stated below, and read a random sample of 100 to check it. Because PlanIt holds more records for some years and authorities than for others, we also set the yearly counts against PlanIt’s own volume of records.

How many self storage planning applications are there in the UK?

As at 18 October 2026 a search of PlanIt for the phrase “self storage” finds 3,895 council register records whose description names it, from 359 authorities. Of those, 18 records and three authorities are in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, which are not part of the UK. That leaves 3,877 records from 356 UK planning authorities: England 3,513, Scotland 186, Wales 149 and Northern Ireland 29 records, from 296, 30, 21 and 9 authorities (our calculation).

The number is a count of records, not of sites, and in this guide the 3,895 records are the series. One scheme can appear in several records, such as a full application, a variation, a discharge of conditions and a certificate; we did not request PlanIt’s associated_id field, which lists potential related application references. The count also leaves out records that use other spellings, and recent records from authorities PlanIt names as barred or stopped.

By our rule, 2,270 of the 3,895 records are new applications for the development itself, and the rest are submissions about conditions, amendments, certificates, consultations and other records (our count; the rule and its check come below).

A record is a council register entry as PlanIt republishes it. PlanIt derives fields of its own, among them a type, a state, a start date and a decided date. PlanIt’s start date is the earlier of the council’s date received and date validated, and PlanIt’s decided date is the earliest of the council’s decision, issued and published dates. The description is the council’s own text for the proposal.

PlanIt is a free site that collects planning applications from council websites. Its FAQ says the data may be used for anything with no attribution, that the site is run by one person, and that it is not a commercial enterprise and has no commercial terms. The FAQ adds that the data are scraped from council sites, many of which carry legal disclaimers, and that it would not be wise to base commercial services on the system.

As at 18 October 2026 PlanIt’s acknowledgements page says plans and drawings submitted to councils are protected by copyright, and it carries no licence statement for the councils’ descriptions. This guide reproduces no council description word for word, and it names no applicant, agent, officer, street or business.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (the Ministry in this guide) publishes accredited official statistics on the number of planning applications received, decided and granted in England, and its release of 24 September 2026 covers April to June 2026.

On 18 October 2026 we found no line for self storage in the Ministry’s planning application statistics: none of the 334 column names in its open data file, none of 49,058 paragraphs in its Live Tables workbook, and none on three Ministry pages, although the word storage does appear in each kind of source.

The word storage appears in 25 of the 334 column names, in 3 workbook paragraphs and on 3 lines of the guidance notes (our count), so the search could find storage wording. The Ministry’s guidance notes to councils, updated 7 April 2026, ask them to record development in use classes B2 and B8 under “General Industry, storage and warehousing”.

England’s official survey is covered in the guide to storage planning permission decisions and timescales, which counts a different set from the records here. Appeal decisions are covered in the guide to self storage planning appeals, which reads decisions of the Planning Inspectorate and not council registers.

Where do these figures come from, and how accurate are they?

The figures come from one search of PlanIt’s API on 18 October 2026; in a random sample of 100 of the 3,895 records, 96 are about a proposal for a self storage use or building, and how many records PlanIt lacks is unknown.

We read PlanIt between 00:33 and 03:39 on 18 October 2026, inside the overnight window of 18:00 to 06:00 that its FAQ asks of bulk users. The 152 requests were at least a minute apart, carried a User-Agent that identifies us, and stayed within the daily limit of 300 that PlanIt asks users to keep to. A reader can repeat these steps; a later search can return different counts as PlanIt’s records change.

• The phrase and the rule. We searched PlanIt’s API for “self storage” and fetched 13 pages of 300 records. PlanIt returned 3,896 records, its own total. We kept the 3,895 whose description has self, followed by any spaces or hyphens, followed by store or storage. One record was found only through PlanIt’s type, status or decision fields and is counted apart.
• The fields. We requested PlanIt’s identifier, area, type, state, size, dates, description, links and statutory-days, and the council’s own decision, application-type, development-type and status words. We requested no applicant, agent or officer field and no address or postcode field.
• What the phrase misses. Other spellings (“self store”, selfstorage and selfstore) returned 84 records, 6 of them already in the series, so 78 further records sit outside it. We kept the 78 out of every count.
• Blanks. PlanIt’s fields are blank for some of the 3,895 records: the type in 146, the state in 38 and PlanIt’s decided date in 384 (our count).
• Consistency checks. The six start-date windows we asked for add up to PlanIt’s total of 3,896, and for four authorities PlanIt’s filtered count equals the rows we hold. A second computation, written separately but using the same definition of a duplicate, reproduced all 37 of its checks; it did not check the classes or the sample.
• Precision. We read a random sample of 100 records and coded each one. Of the 100, 96 are about a proposal for a self storage use or building (58 the proposal itself, 34 a submission about its conditions, 4 an amendment or certificate) and 4 mention self storage only as context. The codes are ours, and a different reader would differ on borderline records.
• PlanIt’s state. Of the 55 decided Full or Outline records in that sample, PlanIt’s state pointed the same way as the council’s own decision words in 52. One disagreed and two were consultation responses typed Full or Outline. The sample holds only 5 Rejected and 6 Withdrawn records, so it says little about those two states.
• Our classes. We checked our six description classes on 15 records a class, twice. The second version agreed with our reading in 79 of 90 records, and two small faults it showed were then fixed.
• Coverage notice. PlanIt’s news page names 38 authorities whose data are barred from the end of June 2026, stopped at a stated month or intermittent. Of the 3,895 records, 264 come from them, 194 from the 24 barred authorities (our count). For 23 of those 24, PlanIt’s latest start date is between 5 June and 31 July 2026.

These checks show that the pull matches PlanIt’s own totals and that the sampled records name self storage. They stop short of showing that PlanIt holds every record a council has registered. What the series does not hold or show is set out below.

• Reasons, reports and use classes. On 18 October 2026 we found no field in PlanIt’s data dictionary for the reasons for a refusal, an officer’s report or a use class, and PlanIt’s FAQ says it collects a count of documents and a link to the list, not the documents.
• Before 2000. PlanIt’s FAQ says the historical target date for its authorities varies, with most set to 5 June 2002 and a significant number to 5 January 2000. On 18 October 2026 we found no record in the series that starts before 2000: the earliest start date is 16 February 2000, although PlanIt holds 23,225 records of all kinds that start earlier.
• Appeals. PlanIt’s data dictionary lists six optional appeal fields, which stay blank unless a council’s page supplies them. On 18 October 2026 we found no appeal result on any of the 70 Rejected records PlanIt shows as decided in 2025 or 2026, and only 84 of the series’ 396 Rejected records carry one, so this guide gives no appeal figure from PlanIt.
• Completeness. On 18 October 2026 we found no figure on PlanIt’s FAQ, API, data dictionary, news or acknowledgements pages for how complete its records are for any council or year; its news page lists authorities whose data are barred, stopped or intermittent.
• Whole-year counts. On 18 October 2026 PlanIt would not return a count of all its records for the whole of 2000 or of 2001 (both requests timed out after 45 seconds), and we asked for no other whole year, so for 22 of the 26 full years the records-per-10,000 figures rest on our estimate from two sample months. The next section gives the estimate’s tested error.

Is the number rising, or is PlanIt just holding more records?

Records starting each year rose from 15 in 2000 and 44 in 2003 to 403 in 2025, by PlanIt’s start date (our count). The rise holds when PlanIt’s widening coverage and its own volume of records are allowed for. It is still a rise in records, not in applications, and this section says what the controls show and no more.

PlanIt’s coverage widened early. Counting an authority as covered in a year that lies between its earliest and latest start date in PlanIt’s area records, PlanIt covers 268 authorities in 2000, 389 in 2002 and 416 in 2019, and the series has records from 12 authorities in 2000, 112 in 2019 and 179 in 2025 (our count).

A constant panel is the 382 authorities whose records in PlanIt run from 1 January 2003 or earlier to 1 January 2026 or later, so its own coverage looks constant, though a gap inside that range would go unseen. It holds 42 records starting in 2003 and 394 in 2025, so the rise is not only authorities joining PlanIt (our inference).

We also divided by PlanIt’s own count of all records starting in the same year. For 22 of the 26 full years that count is our estimate: six times the sum of PlanIt’s March and September counts, scaled by 0.9399 so that, with the counted parts, the years add up to PlanIt’s area totals. For 2002, 2010, 2019 and 2024 we counted all twelve months and used the count.

Our values for that count stay between about 680,000 and about 960,000 a year from 2003 to 2025, with about 850,000 for 2003 and about 760,000 for 2025 (our calculation, rounded). They do not trend upward, so a growing database does not explain the rise after 2003 (our inference).

The figures are therefore indicative only: about 0.3 records per 10,000 PlanIt records in 2000, 1.5 in 2007, 0.7 in 2012, 2.5 in 2019, 5.5 in 2024 and 5.3 in 2025 (our calculation, rounded). Of those years, 2019 and 2024 are counted and the other four are estimated.

The estimate has a tested error. In the four years where every month was counted, it differed from the count by 3.2% to 8.2% in a single year. A small move between neighbouring years, such as 5.5 in 2024 against 5.3 in 2025, sits inside that error and is not a finding.

The long rise is clearer over periods: about 0.9 records per 10,000 for 2000 to 2009, 1.4 for 2010 to 2019 and 3.8 for 2020 to 2025 (our calculation, rounded, indicative only). The last is more than four times the first. Counting only records that are new applications by our rule, the yearly figure rose from 13 in 2000 to 206 in 2025.

The 2026 figures cover a part year. PlanIt counted 495,118 records starting from 1 January to 31 October (its latest start date is 15 October), and 343 of ours start by 14 October, which is about 6.9 per 10,000 (our calculation, rounded, indicative only). Councils barred from the end of June 2026 lower PlanIt’s count as well as ours (our inference), so we offer this as a part-year observation and set it beside no full year.

What kinds of scheme do the descriptions name?

A change of use or conversion is the largest class of the 3,895 records, with 1,331, then a discharge or variation of conditions with 1,248 and a new building, extension or siting of containers with 1,189 (our count). Signage accounts for 57, a certificate of lawfulness for 51 and other records for 19.

Council descriptions vary, so we sorted the records into six classes by the first rule that matches the description. The rule reads the description only. It tries a certificate of lawfulness first, then conditions, then signage, then the change of use and building words, with container wording last.

Beside PlanIt’s own type, we grouped the council’s own application-type words. Of the 3,895 records, 2,349 use an application word (full, outline, change of use or similar), 975 are conditions, details or reserved matters, and 265 are amendments, variations or renewals. The other 306 are consultations from another authority (94), certificates (69), advertisements (59), screening or pre-application records (43), prior approvals or notifications (28) and listed building, telecoms or appeal records (13).

Combining the council’s words with our description class, 2,270 of the 3,895 records are new applications for the development itself by our rule. The rest are condition and details submissions, amendments and renewals, certificates, consultations, screening records, advertisements and prior approvals. The rule agreed with our reading of the 100 sampled records in 96, against 88 for PlanIt’s Full or Outline types.

PlanIt derives its types by searching for key words, so we chart our own classes instead. By PlanIt’s type, 2,184 records are Full, 206 Outline, 333 Amendment, 944 Conditions, 61 Advertising, 7 Heritage, 3 Telecoms and 11 Other, and 146 have no type.

PlanIt’s dictionary defines Outline as proposals prior to a full application, including assessments, scoping opinions and outline applications. Only 41 of the 206 carry the word outline in the council’s own application-type words, and 115 of the 333 typed Amendment say change of use in the council’s words.

Container yards have their own guide: planning permission for storage containers. As at 18 October 2026 a record that mentions containers is in this count only where its description also names self storage, and our class for new buildings, extensions and siting of containers reads container wording.

Permitted development and prior approval routes are covered by Class R and converting a building into self storage. The series holds 28 prior approval or notification records by the councils’ words, and we did not check their clocks. The Ministry’s notes tie use class B8 to storage or distribution, and the Class B8 entry explains the class.

Where are self storage planning applications made?

Grouped by the nation of the council area that each record belongs to in PlanIt, England has 3,513 records, Scotland 186, Wales 149 and Northern Ireland 29 (our count). Set against the records PlanIt holds for each nation’s areas, that is about 1.9 per 10,000 PlanIt records in England, 1.7 in Wales, 1.5 in Scotland and 0.6 in Northern Ireland (our calculation, rounded, indicative only). The 18 records outside the UK are left out of these counts.

The Northern Ireland and Welsh counts are small, and PlanIt’s coverage differs by authority, so we draw no comparison between nations from these ratios.

By PlanIt’s region, the 35 London authorities with a record hold 1,336 records, but only 499 of those are PlanIt’s Full or Outline type. In the other English regions the count of that type runs from 68 in the North East to 313 in the South East (our count).

Raw counts by authority follow how a council registers condition submissions as much as how much self storage it considered (our inference). The authority with the most records, Hounslow, has 236, of which 121 are PlanIt type Conditions and 53 are Full or Outline. Across the ten authorities with the most records, 588 of 986 are type Conditions, against 356 of 2,909 in all the others (our count). So this guide ranks no council.

Of the 359 authorities, 31 have exactly one record, 206 have two to nine and 122 have ten or more (our count).

Each nation sets its own planning route, fees and decision periods, and the guides to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland cover them.

Are self storage planning applications approved or refused?

This guide gives no approval rate, no odds and no forecast, because a PlanIt state is PlanIt’s label for one record and not the chance of a new application. Of the 2,390 records PlanIt types as Full or Outline, 2,180 are decided in PlanIt (any state but Undecided or blank): 1,142 Permitted, 562 Conditions, 265 Rejected, 204 Withdrawn, 5 Referred and 2 Unresolved (our count). Another 186 are Undecided and 24 carry a blank state.

England’s official survey of council decisions is covered in the guide to storage planning permission decisions and timescales, which counts a different set from these records.

PlanIt’s dictionary defines Permitted as approved, Conditions as approved with conditions imposed, Rejected as refused and Withdrawn as withdrawn before a decision. Referred means referred to government or another authority, Unresolved means no longer active with no decision (a split decision, for example), and Undecided means active with no decision yet. Its type Conditions is a different label, for a discharge of conditions imposed on existing applications.

PlanIt derives the state from the council’s decision and status words, so it is not a legal outcome, and a Permitted state does not mean a scheme was built. As the method section sets out, the state pointed the same way as the council’s own words in 52 of the 55 decided Full or Outline records in our sample, and two of those 55 were consultation responses, so that set is not all applications.

By the year a record starts, of the Full or Outline records PlanIt shows as decided, 322 of 435 for 2000 to 2009 are Permitted or Conditions, as are 570 of 716 for 2010 to 2019 and 812 of 1,029 for 2020 to 2026 (our count). Of the 1,229 Full or Outline records starting in 2020 to 2026, 179 are Undecided, so the latest period is incomplete.

PlanIt’s appeal fields are too patchy to give an appeal figure, as the method section shows. Appeal decisions are covered in the guide to self storage planning appeals.

How long do councils take to decide them?

In England, PlanIt’s decided date falls a median of 97 days after PlanIt’s start date for 1,688 records that PlanIt types Full or Outline and shows as Permitted, Conditions or Rejected, with quartiles of 62 and 164.75 days (our calculation). Each of the 1,688 has both dates. We left out one record with a negative interval and 270 records of that kind outside England.

As at 18 October 2026, article 34(2) of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 gives a council in England 13 weeks to decide an application for major development and 8 weeks for development that is not major, each counted from the day after the council receives the application.

The periods are longer if the applicant and the council agree in writing. The article also sets 10 weeks for technical details consent for major development or for public infrastructure development, and 5 weeks for technical details consent that is not major.

As at 18 October 2026, regulation 68(2) of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 substitutes 16 weeks for the 8 and 13 weeks where the council determines an application that needs an environmental impact assessment.

PlanIt’s days run from PlanIt’s start date to PlanIt’s decided date. PlanIt’s start date is the earlier of the council’s date received and date validated, so it is not necessarily the day the statutory period starts, and PlanIt’s days include any agreed extension. PlanIt’s size field is its own rule and not the statutory definition of major development, so we cannot give a record the 8-week or the 13-week period.

Of the 1,688, 342 (20.3%) were decided within 56 days of PlanIt’s start date and 795 (47.1%) within 91 days (our calculation). Those are the lengths of 8 and 13 weeks, but they are not a test of whether a council met a statutory period.

By the year a record starts, the median is 84 days for 338 records starting in 2000 to 2009, 91 days for 571 in 2010 to 2019 and 117 days for 779 in 2020 to 2026. The quartiles are 56 and 115.25 days, 60 and 147, and 71 and 200. We read no cause into the longer median of the latest period.

PlanIt’s statutory-days field, which its dictionary marks as derived, says 56 for 710 of the 1,688 records and 91 for 235, which is 945 together (our calculation). The rest carry no value or another one. Among the 710 the median is 79.5 days and among the 235 it is 140 days, both above the number the field names, though PlanIt’s days include any agreed extension.

The Ministry’s own in-time measure for England is covered in the guide to storage planning permission decisions and timescales. PlanIt’s days are a different measure, so the two cannot be set beside each other.

We did not check decision periods in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland on 18 October 2026, so the days figure is England only. The guides to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland give each nation’s own periods.

Does a record show whether a site was built?

No: a record carries PlanIt’s label for the council’s decision on it, not what happened next. On 18 October 2026 we found no field in PlanIt’s data dictionary that says whether a permitted scheme was started, built or opened.

One scheme can appear several times. In the series, 82 groups of records share the same authority, PlanIt’s start date and description, and 143 groups share the same authority and description whatever their start dates in PlanIt (our count, ignoring case, punctuation and spacing in the descriptions, with none removed). This count does not group records into schemes, because we did not request PlanIt’s associated_id field, which lists potential related application references.

The series also misses records: the 78 with other spellings, and recent records from the authorities PlanIt names as barred or stopped. How complete it is for any council or year is therefore unknown, as the method section sets out. So this guide makes no count of sites, stores or schemes from the series.

What this guide does not cover

As at 18 October 2026 these were outside what we read or counted, and we say so instead of guessing.

• Appeals. This guide gives no appeal figure from PlanIt. The guide to self storage planning appeals covers the Planning Inspectorate’s decisions.
• England’s official survey. The Ministry’s statistics count decisions in a different category, which the guide to storage planning permission decisions and timescales covers.
• Planning routes, fees and periods by nation. The guides to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland cover them. We did not check decision periods outside England.
• Prior approval and permitted development. We counted 28 prior approval or notification records by the councils’ words and did not check their clocks. Class R and converting a building cover those routes.
• Applicants and sites. We requested no applicant, agent or officer field and no address, and this guide names no site, business or scheme.
• Forecasts. This guide makes no forecast of record counts, decisions or decision times.
• Choosing a site. The records do not rank places. The site selection guide covers the choice.

Questions to put to a council and to PlanIt

A council’s planning officer, PlanIt’s own pages and a planning adviser can answer these for a real area. They are questions to ask, not advice.

• Does the council’s register list each discharge of a condition as a separate record, and what does it call that kind of record?
• Which of its application-type words does the council use for a change of use to self storage?
• Is the authority named in PlanIt’s coverage notice, and from which date does PlanIt hold its records?
• Which records for the area belong to one scheme, and has that scheme been started or built?
• How does a reader filter a PlanIt area search by words in the description, and which other fields can that search read?

Sources

All read on 18 October 2026. On 18 October 2026 PlanIt’s FAQ foot line was dated 15 October 2026 and its other pages carried no date.

• PlanIt (planit.org.uk): the FAQ, the API page, the data dictionary, the acknowledgements and the news page.
• Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government: Planning applications in England: April to June 2026 (published 24 September 2026), the PS1 and PS2 district planning matters return guidance notes (updated 7 April 2026) and the live tables on planning application statistics (last updated 24 September 2026).
• Legislation: article 34 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 (the version legislation.gov.uk labels latest available, revised) and regulation 68 of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017.
• Planning Inspectorate: the Casework Database page (last updated 1 October 2026).