Council brownfield land registers and permission in principle

Permission in principle splits a planning decision in two. The first stage settles whether housing-led development is acceptable on the site: its location, its land use and the amount of development. The second stage, technical details consent, deals with everything else. Both come out of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, and the route is closely tied to the brownfield land register every local planning authority in England has to keep.

For a self-builder looking at a small brownfield plot, the register is worth checking before anything else. It may already have done half the work.

What Part 1 and Part 2 of a brownfield register mean

Every local planning authority in England maintains a register of previously developed land that is suitable for housing. It has two parts.

Part 1 lists sites the authority considers suitable, available and achievable for residential development. Inclusion is a statement of the authority's view. It is not a permission and it does not commit the council to granting one.

Part 2 is the one that matters. A site entered in Part 2 is granted permission in principle by the entry itself, without any application by the landowner. The authority has to consult and publicise before entering a site in Part 2, and relatively few authorities use it, so most registers are Part 1 only.

Registers are published as open data and most authorities put them on their website or on the national planning data platform. Check whether your site is on one, and which part.

Being on Part 1 is still useful. It is an authority statement that the site is suitable for housing, and it carries weight in a subsequent application even though it grants nothing.

How permission in principle differs from outline permission

The two look similar and behave differently.

The absence of conditions at the first stage is the practical difference. An outline permission can carry a long list of conditions that shape the reserved matters. A permission in principle cannot, so everything lands in the technical details stage.

Permission in principle is limited to housing-led development. The site must be for housing, though a proportion of other uses is allowed alongside it, and the route is not available for development requiring environmental impact assessment or likely to have a significant effect on a habitats site.

Applying for permission in principle

An application for permission in principle is deliberately thin. You submit the site location plan, a description of the development stating the amount of housing, and the fee. You do not submit drawings of the building, a design statement or technical reports.

That is the attraction and the trap.

The attraction is speed and cost. The statutory determination period is five weeks, the fee is lower than a full application, and the authority has to publicise it and consult before deciding. A refusal can be appealed.

The trap is that the decision is made on very little information, and a council with doubts about access, flooding or heritage has no way to condition its way to a yes. It will refuse instead. If your site has a live constraint, the thin application is not doing you a favour.

A permission in principle lasts for a defined period, after which it expires unless technical details consent has been obtained. Check the current period in the regulations, because it differs between a register entry and an application.

Technical details consent and its determination period

Technical details consent is where the real assessment happens. The application has to be consistent with the permission in principle, and it covers everything else: layout, scale, appearance, access, drainage, ecology, contamination, trees, parking and the rest.

Determination periods follow the usual pattern by scale, so a minor scheme runs to the standard shorter period and a major scheme to the longer one. The council can refuse technical details consent, and it can impose conditions.

The evidence pack looks much like a full application. On a small brownfield plot that usually means a Contaminated Land Assessment for the previous use, a drainage strategy, a tree survey, biodiversity net gain information and a design and access statement. Contaminated land reports are expected to be prepared in accordance with BS 10175 by suitably qualified and experienced persons, and a draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute.

One point that catches people. The permission in principle fixes the amount of development. If the technical details application proposes more units than the permission in principle allows, it is not consistent with it, and the council cannot grant it. Get the number right at stage one.

Getting a site considered for the register

Authorities are required to keep registers under regulations, and most publish a route for landowners to suggest sites.

The practical steps are these.

1. Find the register on the council's website or through the national planning data platform, and check whether the site is already listed.
2. Read the authority's stated criteria for inclusion, which normally follow the regulations: previously developed, suitable, available and achievable, and of at least the minimum size specified.
3. Write to the planning policy team with the site boundary, ownership evidence, the previous use, and a short statement addressing each criterion.
4. Expect the review to happen on the authority's own cycle, which is usually annual rather than on demand.
5. If the site is entered in Part 1, use that in any subsequent application as evidence of the authority's own position on suitability.

Ownership matters. A site nobody can deliver is not available, and authorities do check.

When the route is not worth using

Be honest about the site before choosing this route.

Where the site has a constraint that needs technical work to resolve, such as flood risk, contamination, protected species or a heritage asset nearby, the thin permission in principle application gives the council nothing to say yes to. A full application, or an outline with conditions, is usually faster in the end.

Where you already know the layout you want, a full application settles everything in one determination.

And where the site is not housing-led, or falls outside the prescribed scale limits, or triggers environmental impact assessment or a habitats assessment, the route is simply not available.

An illustrative comparison. A cleared former builder's yard with a clean desk study, mains services and a straightforward access is a good candidate: five weeks to establish the principle, then a technical details application with the layout designed around a settled unit count. The same yard with an unresolved fuel tank, a culverted watercourse and a listed building opposite is not. There, the questions the council needs answered are exactly the ones the permission in principle application does not ask.

Before choosing a route, check the local validation position too, because the items a council adds to the national requirements apply to technical details consent in the same way as to a full application.

PlanScope drafts the supporting documents for either route, structured to UK planning policy, with a "to be confirmed" flag wherever site investigation results are missing. This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. Browse the report types and start a draft.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.