Commencement notices and what developers tell the council

Two separate duties sit behind the phrase commencement notice, and confusing them costs money. One is the Community Infrastructure Levy notice, which has existed since the levy began and which loses you your exemption if you miss it. The other is the general duty to notify the local planning authority before development begins, introduced by Part 3 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 as part of a wider push on build-out transparency.

As at 17 September 2026, the levy notice is long established and enforced. The general notification duty depends on the relevant provisions being brought into force by regulations, so check the current position on legislation.gov.uk before you rely on it for a programme.

The levy notice, which already bites

Under the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010, a person who intends to start a chargeable development must submit a commencement notice to the collecting authority before development begins. It states the intended start date and identifies the permission and the liability.

Miss it and the consequences are immediate rather than discretionary. The authority can determine the deemed commencement date itself, surcharges become payable, and the option to pay by instalments can be lost even where an instalment policy exists.

The harshest outcome is the loss of relief. Self-build exemption and residential extension exemption both depend on the correct notices being submitted in the right order before work starts, and the courts have taken a strict view of those requirements. If you are relying on an exemption, treat the notice as the first item on the construction programme rather than as paperwork.

What the 2023 Act adds

Part 3 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 inserts new provisions into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 dealing with notification before development starts and, for certain larger residential schemes, reporting on progress after it does.

The policy intent is transparency about build-out. Government wanted authorities to know when a permission has been implemented, how quickly homes are being delivered against what was consented, and where implementation has stalled. Local authorities have long complained that they find out a site has started when a neighbour telephones.

Two practical points for a housebuilder. The notice is a notification duty rather than an approval, so there is nothing to wait for once it is served, and it does not replace any of the condition discharge work described below. And the reporting obligations apply to defined categories of development rather than to everything, so the scope is set by the regulations rather than by the Act alone.

Because commencement of these provisions has been staged, the sensible approach on any live programme is to check the current status and then build the notice into the pre-start checklist regardless, since serving a notice you did not strictly owe costs nothing.

Why a material start is not the same as a notice

Serving a notice does not make development lawfully begun, and lawfully beginning development does not discharge the notice duty. They are different questions.

Section 56 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines when development is taken to have begun, by reference to material operations such as digging foundation trenches, laying out an access or demolishing a building. That definition matters most where a permission is about to expire.

The trap is the interaction with pre-commencement conditions. Where a condition prohibits development until a scheme has been approved, works carried out in breach of it may not count as a lawful start, which can leave a developer with an expired permission and unauthorised works on site. Our note on the Hillside judgment and overlapping permissions covers the related problem of implementing a second permission across a site already being built out under a first.

So the sequence is: discharge the conditions that bite before work, serve the levy notice, serve any general notification required, then start.

Record keeping across a phased site

On a single-plot scheme the record is trivial. On a 400-unit site delivered in five phases over seven years, with a section 106 agreement, a phasing condition and separate reserved matters approvals, it stops being trivial quickly.

Keep one register per permission with a row for each obligation and a column for the date it was satisfied, the document reference, and who confirmed it. The entries worth tracking are the condition discharge applications and their decision notices, the levy liability notice and assumption of liability, the commencement notice and its acknowledgement, any relief claim and its determination, the section 106 trigger points, and the phase boundaries as actually built.

Two habits save arguments later. Photograph the first material operation with a dated record. And keep the register with the land, so it transfers on a site sale rather than sitting on a project manager's laptop.

The phase boundary column earns its keep at the end of a project. Where a levy charge is calculated phase by phase and the built phases do not match the phasing plan approved by condition, reconciling the two years later is slow and expensive work.

Where the duties fall on a contractor

Developers routinely assume the main contractor deals with notices because the contractor deals with building control. That assumption has cost several self-builders their exemption.

Building control notification under the Building Regulations is a different regime with different timings and a different recipient. Levy notices go to the collecting authority, which is usually the local planning authority but can be a different body in two-tier areas. General planning notification goes to the local planning authority.

Write the responsibility into the building contract explicitly, and name the person who serves each notice. A Construction Management Plan submitted with the application is a sensible place to record the pre-start sequence, since it is already the document describing how the site will be run.

A practical pre-start sequence

1. List every condition on the decision notice and mark those that must be discharged before any development, before a defined stage, or before occupation.
2. Submit the condition discharge applications early, allowing for the statutory determination period rather than hoping for a quick answer.
3. Confirm the levy position: liability notice received, assumption of liability submitted, any relief claimed and determined in writing.
4. Serve the levy commencement notice before the first material operation, keeping proof of service.
5. Check whether the general notification duty is in force and serve it if so.
6. Record the date and nature of the first material operation on site.
7. Diarise any post-start reporting obligations attached to the permission or the agreement.

Steps three and four are the ones that go wrong. An exemption that has been claimed but not yet determined is not an exemption, and starting work before the determination arrives can end the claim.

Allow real time for step two as well. Discharge applications carry their own determination period, and an authority under pressure will use it. A developer who submits eight discharge applications in the week before the intended start has already lost two months.

Follow reform news on the planning law timeline rather than relying on a summary written when the Act received Royal Assent, because the commencement regulations have been issued in tranches and the picture keeps moving. Where a notice has been missed and work has started, deal with it immediately rather than waiting, since the position is usually worse after an enforcement warning notice arrives.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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