Condition compliance tracker for the construction phase

A condition compliance tracker is a single table, one row per condition, that tells you what has to be submitted, by when, by whom, and where the evidence is filed. Build it on the day the decision notice arrives, not on the day the contractor wants to start. Two things go wrong without one: a pre-commencement condition gets missed and the development starts unlawfully, and a purchaser's solicitor asks for proof of compliance three years later and nobody can find it.

The tracker is also where the fee saving is. A decision notice with eighteen conditions does not need eighteen discharge applications, and most schemes overpay because nobody separated the conditions requiring approval from the conditions requiring only compliance.

Turn the decision notice into a schedule

Transcribe every condition in full, in the authority's numbering, into its own row. Do not summarise at this stage, because the precise wording decides the trigger and the evidence.

Then read each condition for four things. What has to be done. When it has to be done by, expressed as the trigger event rather than a date. Whether approval of details is required or compliance alone is enough. And who physically has to produce the material.

A row per condition with those four answers, plus a status column, is the whole tool. It works in a spreadsheet, and it works better in a spreadsheet than in a document because you will sort it by trigger.

Sort conditions by trigger point

Group the rows, because the groups behave differently.

Pre-commencement conditions have to be discharged before any development begins, and starting in breach of one can mean the works are unlawful rather than merely in breach. The principle established in the Whitley line of cases is that development carried out in breach of a condition precedent is not development authorised by the permission, and later cases have refined but not removed that risk. Treat this group as the critical path.

A useful point on this group: since the insertion of section 100ZA into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, a pre-commencement condition cannot be imposed without the applicant's written agreement, subject to the statutory procedure. If you are reading a draft decision with eleven pre-commencement conditions, that is the moment to negotiate half of them into a later trigger, not after the notice is issued.

Pre-above-ground or pre-slab conditions, usually materials, levels and external details, buy you a few weeks of groundworks while they are determined. Use that window deliberately.

Pre-occupation conditions cover the things that have to be in place before anyone moves in: drainage installed and commissioned, visibility splays provided, parking and cycle stores built, travel plan submitted, bin stores complete, fire and access arrangements confirmed. On a phased scheme these recur per phase or per plot, so number the rows accordingly.

In perpetuity conditions never close. Hours of operation, no external storage, lighting as approved, landscaping replacement within five years, biodiversity management across thirty years. They need a records habit rather than a submission.

Time-limited conditions include the standard three year commencement limit and any temporary consent.

Approval conditions and compliance conditions

This is the distinction that saves money.

A condition requiring details to be submitted to and approved in writing by the local planning authority needs an application for approval of details reserved by condition, with a fee per request. The fee is charged per request rather than per condition, so grouping several conditions into one submission costs less than submitting them one at a time, provided the consultees for each are ready.

A condition requiring you to do something, or to refrain from something, needs no application at all. "The development shall be carried out in accordance with the approved plans" and "no external storage shall take place on the forecourt" are complied with, not discharged. Submitting a discharge application for those wastes the fee and the officer's time, and an officer will sometimes accept it anyway, which is worse because it tells you nothing.

Where a condition is ambiguous, write to the case officer and ask which it is, and keep the reply. That email is evidence.

Section 74A of the 1990 Act provides a deemed discharge route where an authority fails to determine a qualifying request within the prescribed period, operated by serving a notice. It is narrower than people expect, with excluded categories, so read the current exclusions before relying on it. Where the problem is that the condition itself is wrong rather than slow to discharge, the route is a section 73 application to vary it.

Who owns each condition

Put a named person in the owner column, not a company. Conditions fall between parties exactly where the contract is silent.

A workable default split. The planning consultant or agent owns the submissions, the covering letters and the correspondence with the case officer. The designer owns materials, levels, detailed drawings and anything referencing the approved plans. The specialist consultants own their own technical conditions: the ecologist the biodiversity and protected species conditions, the arboriculturist the tree protection, the acoustician the plant noise verification, the engineer the drainage and structural details. The contractor owns the construction management plan, the traffic management plan, wheel washing, hours of work and site hoarding.

Then decide who chases. One person, usually the agent or the project manager, needs to own the tracker itself, with a standing item in the site meeting.

Two conditions are worth naming individually because they fall through the gap most often. The construction-phase conditions, which arrive when the contractor is appointed and the consultant has demobilised, so brief the contractor from the tracker rather than from the decision notice and make sure the Construction Management Plan matches what was approved. And, on relevant higher-risk buildings, the interaction between the planning conditions and the regulatory gateways, where the content of the fire statement submitted at Planning Gateway One has to remain consistent with what is later submitted for approval.

Dates against the build programme

Work backwards. Each approval condition needs a submission date set back from its trigger by the determination period, usually eight weeks, plus time for consultee responses, plus time for the technical work itself.

So for a pre-commencement drainage condition on a site where the lead local flood authority will be consulted, the realistic sequence is four weeks to produce the detailed design, eight weeks for determination, and two weeks of contingency for a request for further information. Three and a half months before the intended start, and that assumes the design team is instructed.

Build those dates into the construction programme as activities with durations, not as notes. A programme that shows "discharge conditions" as a single two-week bar is the programme that slips.

Two scheduling points that recur. Survey seasons can govern a condition: an ecological condition requiring a pre-commencement check, or a translocation to be carried out in a particular window, is bounded by the calendar rather than by the programme. And on anything chargeable, the levy commencement notice has to be served before works begin, which is an administrative step with real financial consequences if it is missed.

Evidence to keep for each one

For each row, keep a single folder containing: the submission as sent, the authority's acknowledgement, the approval letter or notice, the approved documents with revision numbers, and the proof of physical compliance.

Proof of physical compliance is the part that gets neglected. It means dated photographs of tree protection fencing in place before works began, the commissioning certificate for the treatment plant, the sweep test or test certificate for the attenuation system, delivery tickets or sample records for the approved facing brick, the as-built drainage drawing, the ecologist's site visit note, and the installer's confirmation for bat and bird boxes.

Take photographs with a date and a recognisable site reference. A photograph of a fence could be any fence, and three years later that is exactly the objection you will face.

In perpetuity conditions and the handover pack

Conditions that run with the land become somebody else's problem, which means they become a question in the sale.

For a landscaping condition with a five year replacement obligation, keep the planting schedule, the as-planted record and the annual inspection notes. For a biodiversity gain condition, keep the approved biodiversity gain plan, the habitat management and monitoring plan, and each monitoring report as it is produced, since those obligations run for thirty years and the monitoring reports are the only evidence the commitments were honoured. For an operational condition such as hours of use or a plant noise limit, keep the verification report and any complaint record.

Then build the handover pack from the tracker. A purchaser's solicitor will ask whether every condition has been complied with, and the answer that avoids a retention is a schedule listing each condition, its status, the authority's reference and approval date, and the document that proves it. Produce that as a document in its own right at practical completion while the people who did the work are still contactable.

Keep the final version with the title deeds and give a copy to the management company where there is one. You can see what each supporting report involves across all 66 report types, and draft the documents a condition calls for before sending them for professional review. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.

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