Certificates of ownership A to D: getting them right

Every planning application needs a certificate of ownership, and most people tick Certificate A without reading what it says. Certificate A declares that you own all the land in the red line and that no part of it is an agricultural holding. If a strip of verge belongs to the county council, or the access runs over a shared driveway, or the garden includes land you have never had registered, that declaration is wrong, and a certificate of ownership planning declaration that is knowingly or recklessly false is a criminal offence.

Why the certificate exists

Section 65 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 require an applicant to tell anyone else with an interest in the land that an application has been made. The point is procedural fairness. Someone who owns land can object, can make representations about access or boundaries, and can take steps to protect their position.

The certificate is the mechanism for demonstrating that this has been done. The council validates the application partly on the strength of it, and it appears on the public register.

Owner has a defined meaning here, and it is narrower than people assume. It covers the freeholder and any leaseholder with at least seven years of the lease still to run. A tenant on an assured shorthold tenancy is not an owner. Neither is a mortgage lender.

Which certificate applies to your situation

Four certificates cover the possible situations, and only one is signed.

Certificate B is the one most applications should be using and most are not. Joint ownership between spouses, land held in trust, a management company owning the estate roads, a neighbour owning the wall you are building against, a freeholder where you hold a lease: all of these put you in Certificate B territory.

Certificates C and D require evidence that reasonable steps were taken. Keep the search results, the correspondence and the copy of the newspaper notice, because the council can ask and an objector certainly will.

Serving notice on owners and the timing

Notice is given on the prescribed form, which sets out the applicant, the address of the land, the description of development and where the application can be inspected.

Timing is prescribed and is the detail most often missed. The notice has to be served before the application is submitted, and not more than 21 days before. Serve it too early and the certificate is defective. Serve it after submission and the certificate was untrue when signed.

Serve it in a way you can evidence: recorded delivery or personal service with a signed acknowledgement. Email alone is risky unless the recipient has agreed to accept service that way.

Then record what you did. A short file note listing each owner, the date of service, the method and the address is worth more than any amount of recollection two years later when the permission is being scrutinised on a sale.

Agricultural holdings and the separate declaration

The certificate carries a second element dealing with agricultural tenants. Where any part of the application site is an agricultural holding, notice has to be served on every agricultural tenant, and the certificate has to record that.

This catches development on farmland let under a tenancy, including the corner of a field being taken for an access or a new dwelling. The tenant has no veto, but they have a right to know, and a landowner who applies without telling their tenant tends to find the relationship becomes difficult.

Grazing licences and short-term arrangements are not always agricultural holdings in the legal sense, and the distinction depends on the terms of the agreement. Where the position is unclear, serve notice anyway. There is no penalty for serving notice on someone who turns out not to need it.

Consequences of a false certificate

Section 65 makes it an offence to issue a certificate that is knowingly or recklessly false or misleading, prosecuted in the magistrates' court.

The planning consequence is separate and more common. A permission granted on a defective certificate is vulnerable, and an owner who was never notified can challenge it. The courts retain a discretion and will look at whether anyone was actually prejudiced, so not every error is fatal, but nobody wants to be arguing that point.

The commercial consequence arrives at sale or refinance. A purchaser's solicitor checking the planning register will see Certificate A on a site where the title shows a shared access, and will raise an enquiry that has to be answered. Indemnity insurance is sometimes available and sometimes not. Those obligations surface in the same way that local land charges and obligations appear on title, which is to say late and at the worst moment.

Land registry searches before you sign

Twenty minutes of searching prevents most of these problems.

1. Obtain official copies of the register and title plan for the application site from HM Land Registry.
2. Compare the title plan with your proposed red line, and identify every square metre of difference.
3. Where land in the red line is not on your title, search the index map to find out whether it is registered to someone else or unregistered.
4. For unregistered land, check historic conveyances, ask neighbours, and look at who has maintained it.
5. Check the title for leases, rights of way, and any management company interest in estate roads or shared spaces.
6. Decide which certificate applies, and serve notice where it does.

Two practical traps. The red line has to include all land necessary to carry out the development, which normally means the access from the public highway, and the highway boundary is rarely where people assume. And a right of way over a neighbour's land does not make you the owner of it, so a shared driveway inside the red line puts you in Certificate B.

Correcting a certificate after submission

If you discover the certificate is wrong, tell the council immediately and in writing. Serve the notices that should have been served, submit a corrected certificate, and ask the authority to re-consult for the balance of the publicity period.

Most authorities will accept that and carry on. Some will treat the application as invalid and restart the clock, which costs time but resolves the defect properly. Either outcome is better than letting a defective permission be granted.

Where the error is discovered after permission, options narrow. A fresh application with correct certificates is the clean route, and on a householder scheme that is usually the quickest way to make the title clear. Where the development is more complex, factor the risk into the Planning Statement and take advice.

The same discipline applies to reserved matters and other subsequent applications, which carry their own certificates. Practitioners frequently sign Certificate A on a reserved matters submission for a site that has changed hands since the outline permission, and the scope and timing of reserved matters makes that easy to overlook.

Get the ownership position settled before anything else, then enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site 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.