Public money — Free · London-wide
When councils lose and pay.
A planning appeal can generate two different bills: the council's own cost of defending it, and a costs award where unreasonable behaviour caused avoidable expense. Published sources reveal the scale; our borough table covers the smaller set of committee cases we could match to appeal decisions.
Awarded against London councils
£2.3m
Major schemes (2018–23, FOI sourced)
Awarded only for unreasonable behaviour (e.g. refusing against officer advice without substantiated reasons). PINS decides the award; the £ is assessed privately and never published — borough totals require FOI.
Matched committee cases with costs awards
15 committee-refusal cases matched to appeal decisions recording a costs award. This is not every London costs award.
+ 18 more
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Sources & method
The headline £ figure is the cited FOI total for London major schemes in 2018–23, not a sum of the borough rows. The borough rows count committee refusals in our published-minutes dataset that were matched to an appeal decision with a costs award. PINS records the award but not the privately assessed amount, so no £ value is inferred for an individual case.