, Property
The loft conversion was finished in March. In July a planning enforcement officer knocks, because the rear dormer sits on a property in a conservation area, which removed the permitted development right the builder assured you existed. You now have a building you cannot sell, a mortgage on it, and a decision to make about a retrospective application you might lose.
Planning is the part of property that punishes assumption. It is also the part where the rules are written down and free to read.
Development means more than building something new
The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines development as building, engineering, mining or other operations, or a material change in the use of land or buildings. Most people hear the first half. The second half catches more investors.
Changing a family house into a house in multiple occupation for seven people is development, because it is a material change of use from class C3 to a use outside the classes. Turning a shop into a flat is development. Running a business from a garage can be development if it materially changes the character of the use. None of these involve laying a brick.
Use classes in England were reorganised in 2020, with the broad commercial class E replacing several former retail and office classes, and permitted development rights allowing certain class E premises to become residential subject to prior approval. These rights are hedged with conditions on size, light, space standards and location, and councils can and do remove them. The rights differ in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which have their own systems and their own use class orders.
Permitted development is a national grant, and your council may have withdrawn it
Permitted development rights come from the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. They grant planning permission by law for specified works, subject to detailed limits: heights, depths, proportions of curtilage, materials matching, distance from boundaries, and restrictions on side extensions and roof alterations.
Four things remove or reduce them, and each catches people:
- An Article 4 direction. A council can issue one to withdraw specified permitted development rights in a defined area, most commonly to require planning permission for small HMO conversions or to control alterations in a conservation area. These are local, they are published on the council's website, and they are not always obvious.
- Designation. Conservation areas, national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and World Heritage sites all reduce permitted development rights. Listing removes more, and listed building consent is a separate regime with criminal penalties for unauthorised work.
- A planning condition on an earlier permission that removed rights for the site, common on new estates.
- The property being a flat or maisonette rather than a house. Most householder permitted development rights simply do not apply to flats.
If you are relying on permitted development for anything significant, apply for a lawful development certificate before you start. It costs a fraction of a full application, it takes about eight weeks, and it produces a document a future buyer's solicitor will accept. Relying on a builder's opinion produces nothing you can sell.
The eight weeks is a target, and the extension of time is routine
Once validated, a local planning authority is expected to determine a minor application within eight weeks, and a major application within 13 weeks, or 16 weeks where an environmental impact assessment is required. Validation itself is a step: an application with a missing plan or an unpaid fee is not valid and the clock has not started.
In practice authorities frequently ask applicants to agree an extension of time. Refusing puts you in a position where you can appeal against non-determination, which usually takes longer than waiting. Most applicants agree, and that is why published determination statistics look better than the lived experience.
During the period the application is publicised, consulted on with statutory bodies, and assessed against the development plan and material considerations. Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires determination in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise, which is the sentence that decides most disputes. Neighbour objections are material only insofar as they raise planning issues. Loss of a private view is not a planning issue. Loss of light, overlooking, noise and highway safety are.
Conditions are where permission is granted and value is removed
A permission almost always arrives with conditions. Some are procedural, like commencement within three years. Others are substantive and expensive: materials to be approved before work starts, a construction management plan, ecology surveys, contaminated land investigation, drainage details, restrictions on hours of work, or an occupancy restriction.
Each condition requiring approval before commencement carries a discharge application, a fee and a wait, and a condition discharged late is a condition breached. Conditions can be varied or removed under section 73 of the 1990 Act, but that is another application and another decision that can go against you.
Then there are the contributions. Larger schemes attract a section 106 agreement covering affordable housing, education or highways, negotiated with the authority and registered as a local land charge. Many authorities also charge the Community Infrastructure Levy on net additional floorspace, at rates set in a local charging schedule. CIL is unforgiving on procedure: fail to submit a commencement notice before starting and you can lose your instalment rights and any relief you claimed, including self-build relief. That has ruined more small schemes than refusal has.
An appeal is a year, and it starts from a worse position
Refused, or granted with a condition you cannot live with, you can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. A householder appeal must be lodged within 12 weeks of the decision. Most other appeals allow six months. Appeals are decided by written representations, a hearing or an inquiry, and the route determines the cost and the timetable.
Written representations on a small scheme can be decided in a matter of months. An inquiry on a contested residential scheme is a year or more and involves planning consultants, and often counsel. Costs are not usually awarded, only where a party has behaved unreasonably. Meanwhile your site sits there with finance on it.
Enforcement runs on its own clock. In England, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 moved to a single ten-year immunity period for enforcement action for breaches occurring after April 2024, replacing the old four-year rule for operational development. The practical effect is that unauthorised work is at risk for far longer than many builders still tell people.
Where this shows up in the game
Housebuilding, architecture and development arrive in Business Baron with the Property & Construction Track, an add-on to the full game. Planning runs as a process with dates rather than a switch, and the council is one of the bodies whose letters decide your month. A scheme that spends a year at appeal is a year of costs before it earns anything.