Cumberland: cooling planning decisions

Enough has come before this council to see a pattern without over-reading it. Cumberland has ruled on 46 cases naming cooling equipment, saying yes 45 times and no 1.

A further 5 applications mentioning cooling plant sit on Cumberland's record with no decision against them - still live, withdrawn, or closed some other way. None of them are in the rate below, and that cuts both ways: a withdrawal is an applicant changing their mind, not a council saying no.

Put as a proportion, 97.8% of 46 rulings went the applicant's way, counting all development types, with 11 of the 46 coming from households and the rest from commercial or mixed schemes. Very nearly everything that reaches a ruling passes it.

The scope matters as much as the number. Commercial and mixed-use plant makes up a large share of any council's cooling caseload, so an all-development rate is a weaker guide to a domestic application than its size suggests.

There is no householder-only rate on this page. Cumberland has decided 11 householder applications mentioning cooling plant, below the sample size we publish a percentage from, so the count stands on its own and the rate is withheld.

Air-to-air specifically - the equipment that both heats and cools, and the only category with a permitted-development route on a house - is named in 1 of Cumberland's decided applications. That is a small number everywhere, and it reflects the market being early rather than the technology being rare.

Cumberland has decided 24 applications mentioning an air-source heat pump and approved 100%, which is the higher of its two figures on this page.

These two figures are never added, averaged or read as one. Most air-source schemes heat rather than cool, and an application mentioning both sits in both counts.

The distinction is the whole point: an air-to-air heat pump, which heats as well as cools, can be permitted development on a house, and a cooling-only unit cannot.

Since 2025-05-29, England's permitted-development rules let a house fit an air-to-air heat pump, which heats as well as cools, without a planning application in many cases, within set size, siting and noise limits. A unit that only cools has no equivalent route and needs a full application whatever the property.

That is why the decisions above matter more than they would have before the change. Every cooling-only installation now crosses a planning officer's desk, so the council's posture is not background information, it is the decision.

Flats are the sharpest exception, here as everywhere in England: the permitted-development right for an outdoor unit belongs to the house rather than to a flat within it, so a flat will usually need freeholder or managing-agent consent as well as planning permission.

What those refusals were FOR is a national question at the volume of officer reasoning currently published, not a council-level one, and we do not pretend otherwise. Both findings are set out with their sample sizes: why cooling applications get refused and the conditions councils attach to an approval.

Every council we can publish a figure for is listed on the council index.

Applications are identified from their own description, so every count on these pages means applications mentioning cooling equipment, not every cooling installation in the area. An application that fitted the same kit but described it as external plant is not in these figures, which makes them a floor on activity rather than a census.

Each application is assigned to Cumberland through the postcode on the application itself. Of the 51 applications recorded for this authority, 100% carry a location we could resolve; nationally 1738 of 19260 applications could not be tied to a district at all and sit outside every figure on this site rather than being quietly assigned somewhere.

What this page cannot tell you is what will happen at your address. It has no view of your elevation, your neighbours' windows, whether your home sits in a conservation area, or whether it is a listed building - and a neighbour's approval settles none of those. This is indicative guidance drawn from public planning records, not legal advice: confirm the final position with your Local Planning Authority before you install.