For anyone who owned a site or a building with development potential, the clock on any new permission began to run faster in August 2005. Many owners obtain a planning permission and then wait for funding, a buyer or a better market before they build. From 24 August 2005 that waiting time was shorter, and a permission left on the shelf could lapse sooner than expected.
What changed
Section 51 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 came into force in England on 24 August 2005. It changed the default time limit in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 so that development must normally begin within three years of the grant of full planning permission, not five. The same reduction applied to listed building consent.
The key points are:
- The change applied to applications received by the council after the section came into force. Permissions granted on earlier applications kept their existing time limits.
- For outline permissions, the default is that reserved matters must be submitted within three years, and the development begun within two years of the final approval of reserved matters.
- An application to vary conditions could no longer be used to extend the time for starting work.
- A council can still set a different period by condition where it has a reason to do so.
You can read section 51 on legislation.gov.uk.
What owners and developers should do
- Diarise the expiry date the day the decision notice arrives, and read every condition. Some conditions must be discharged before work starts, and those approvals take time.
- Plan the pre start work early. Measured surveys, detailed drawings, Building Regulations approval, party wall notices and tendering can easily take a year.
- Understand what counts as a start. Work must be a genuine material operation under the permission, and any conditions that go to the heart of the permission must have been dealt with first. Take advice before relying on a minimal start.
- For listed buildings, remember that listed building consent has the same three year limit, and that the two consents may need to be coordinated.
How we help
We prepare planning and listed building consent applications, discharge conditions and then take schemes through to tender and site. See our Planning and Heritage service, and how we later took a rural brownfield site in Essex through planning.