Article 4 direction compensation and the 12-month notice rule

Article 4 direction compensation is the reason your council almost certainly gave you a year's warning. Section 108 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 lets a landowner claim compensation when rights granted by a development order are withdrawn and a later planning application for that same development is refused, or granted subject to conditions. That liability falls away if notice of the withdrawal was published at least 12 months before the direction took effect. So authorities publish a draft, wait out the year, then confirm the direction with no bill attached. Understanding that timetable is what turns an Article 4 direction from a nasty surprise into something you can plan around.

For a landlord converting houses to small houses in multiple occupation, or a buyer relying on Class MA to take an office to flats, the practical question is rarely whether the council can do this. It can. The questions are when it bites, what it actually covers, and whether the year between publication and effect is long enough to get an application in.

Two ways a council can switch off permitted development rights

Article 4 of the General Permitted Development Order 2015 gives a local planning authority power to direct that specified permitted development rights shall not apply, either across the whole of its area or within a mapped boundary. Schedule 3 to the Order sets out how that is done, and it offers two routes.

The ordinary route is a direction made in draft, publicised, then confirmed and brought into effect on a stated later date. Councils controlling the loss of family housing to houses in multiple occupation almost always use this route, and almost always set the effective date at least 12 months after the notice.

The second route is an immediate direction. It takes effect on the day it is made, before anyone has a chance to respond, and it is available only in the narrower circumstances Schedule 3 describes. Authorities reach for it when a specific building or a small group of buildings is under imminent threat, usually in a conservation area. An immediate direction still has to be confirmed. Schedule 3 gives the authority six months from the date the direction was made, and if that deadline passes without confirmation the direction stops having effect.

Why councils wait 12 months

The delay is financial, not procedural courtesy. Under section 108 as amended, compensation is excluded where the withdrawal is effected by an Article 4 direction and notice of it was published within a defined window before it took effect. In practice that means publishing notice not less than 12 months before the effective date. Confirm the direction earlier than that and the authority exposes itself to claims from every affected owner whose subsequent application fails.

That is also why the 12 months are real. A council which has waited a year has removed its own risk and has very little reason to extend the window further for an individual owner. But the year is not dead time. A prior approval application submitted before the effective date runs on its own clock.

Compensation under section 108 and its limits

Where the exclusion does not apply, a claim runs to the authority. Two heads of loss are recoverable: expenditure rendered abortive by the withdrawal, and depreciation in the value of the claimant's interest in the land attributable to the refusal. Speculative development profit is not part of it, and neither is the difference between what you paid for the building and what it is now worth for its existing use.

The trigger matters as much as the heads of claim. Compensation is not payable simply because rights were removed. You must apply for planning permission for the development the Order previously permitted, and that application must be refused or granted subject to conditions other than those the Order itself imposed. An owner who never applies has nothing to claim. Claims are time limited, so if you are in the narrow band where a claim is arguable, take advice quickly rather than waiting to see how the market moves.

Consultation, confirmation and the Secretary of State

Schedule 3 requires the authority to publicise a draft direction by local advertisement and by site notice, and to serve notice on owners and occupiers of the land affected where that is practicable. Serving every owner in a two-thousand-property Article 4 area is rarely practicable, so the site notice and the newspaper advertisement do most of the work. Representations must be allowed for a period of at least 21 days.

The authority then decides whether to confirm. It must consider the representations it received, and a confirmation report which does not engage with the points made is vulnerable. Notice of the making and of the confirmation goes to the Secretary of State, who keeps a power to modify or cancel the direction.

National policy shapes what the authority can defend. The National Planning Policy Framework (August 2026 edition) expects Article 4 directions to be limited to situations where they are necessary to protect local amenity or the wellbeing of the area, and it applies a tighter test again to directions removing rights for changes of use to residential, where the bar is avoiding wholly unacceptable adverse impacts. Directions must apply to the smallest geographical area possible. Many councils pair a direction with a design code or an adopted supplementary document so that the replacement decision-making has something to bite on.

Making an objection the council has to consider

Generic objections to the principle of Article 4 control get noted and dismissed. Objections that change directions are evidential and geographic.

1. Test the boundary. Councils frequently draw a direction to ward or postcode lines when the harm they have evidenced is concentrated in four or five streets. Ask for the household composition or licensing data that justifies each part of the boundary.
2. Test the necessity. If the authority already has a local plan policy applying a concentration threshold to houses in multiple occupation, ask what the direction adds that the policy does not.
3. Test the class list. A direction withdrawing Class MA across a whole town centre needs evidence about that town centre's office stock, not a general statement about protecting employment land.
4. Offer a narrower alternative in writing. An authority that has a drafted alternative in front of it is more likely to modify than one told simply to withdraw.

Put representations in before the deadline in the notice, in writing, addressed to the officer named. Ask to be told of the confirmation decision.

Works started before the direction bites

A direction does not reach back. Development lawfully begun under permitted development rights before the direction takes effect remains lawful, and prior approval granted before the effective date is not undone by it. The change of use route is harder than the building route here, because a material change of use happens at a moment rather than over weeks, and there is no foundation trench to photograph.

If you are inside the notice period and intend to rely on existing rights, do three things. Get the prior approval application in early, since the determination period runs on regardless of the direction. Record the date the use changed with tenancy agreements, council tax records and utility accounts. Then consider a certificate of lawful development for the existing use, which is the only formal way to have the position confirmed.

Where the direction catches you and a full application becomes the route, the evidence base grows. A change of use that would have gone through prior approval on four matters now attracts the council's full local list, and it is worth checking the supporting documents the council will expect before you commit to a submission date.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a site in an Article 4 area is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.