Discharge planning conditions

Find out which conditions you must discharge

Read your decision notice. Each condition says what the council must approve and when: before work starts, before a named stage, or before the building is used. Conditions that need the council's consent, agreement or approval of details have to be discharged in writing before that point. Compliance conditions are ongoing requirements that need no discharge, but you must keep to them.

Do not start work until every pre-commencement condition has been discharged in writing.

Prepare and send your request

Make your request to the local planning authority in writing, using the standard application form for approval of details reserved by a condition. Identify the planning permission and send the details and plans each condition calls for; the wording of the condition tells you what those are. One request can cover several conditions, so group those that need similar information.

Pay the fee with the request, because it cannot be paid afterwards. If your details do not satisfy a condition and you send revised ones as a new request, you pay a fresh fee each time as if it were the first. Some councils confirm conditions informally without charging, and you can then decide whether to ask for formal confirmation.

Two kinds of approval follow a different route. Reserved matters need a reserved matters application, and the biodiversity gain condition needs a biodiversity gain plan submitted for approval before you start.

Wait for the decision

The council must give you notice of its decision within 8 weeks beginning with the day after it receives your request, or a longer period you agree with it in writing. For a condition on environmental impact assessment development the period is 16 weeks. It can approve the details, ask for more, or refuse. If it refuses, or does not decide in time, you can appeal.

Plan your start date around the decision period plus time to answer any queries, and keep the council's written confirmation of each discharge. Buyers, lenders and later owners may ask to see it.

If the council is late

For a condition imposed on a permission granted after 15 April 2015 that needs the council's approval, you can use the deemed discharge procedure. Once at least 6 weeks have passed since the council received your request, or a shorter period you have agreed in writing, you serve a deemed discharge notice. It must give details of the request, identify the condition, confirm that no appeal has been made if the decision period has already run, and state the date the discharge is to take effect. That date cannot be earlier than the end of the decision period or 14 days after the council receives the notice, whichever is later.

If the council has not given its decision by that date, the condition is treated as discharged. The procedure does not apply if you and the council agreed in writing that it would not, or to the biodiversity gain condition.

If you cannot meet a condition

Speak to the case officer before you send a request, and ask what the council needs to see. If a change to the development itself is minor, ask whether it can be treated as a non-material amendment under section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The council decides whether a change is non-material.