Correcting an error in a planning decision notice

A decision notice with the wrong drawing number on it is still the permission you hold. So correcting an error in a planning decision depends on two things: who issued the decision, and whether the mistake sits in the operative part of the document or in the reasoning. A local planning authority has no general statutory power to withdraw or rewrite a notice once it has gone out. Decisions of the Secretary of State and of appointed inspectors can be corrected, under a narrow procedure in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Everything else runs through section 96A, section 73 or a fresh application.

Errors that actually turn up on notices

The recurring ones are dull and expensive. A drawing number transposed in the approved plans condition, so the permission approves revision B when the officer assessed revision C. A condition lifted from an unrelated case, complete with a reason referring to a watercourse the site does not have. A time limit condition that says three years but omits the commencement wording. An address that names the wrong plot on a subdivided site.

Then there are the errors that change the grant. A description of development that says "two dwellings" where the application and the officer report both dealt with three. A refusal notice issued where the committee resolved to approve. A permission whose red line reference points at the neighbouring title.

Article 35 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 sets what the notice must contain, including a reason for every condition and full reasons for refusal. A notice that fails on those points is defective in a way that matters at appeal, not merely untidy.

What the authority can put right itself

Nothing, formally. The notice is the decision, and a planning permission is construed as a whole: the operative grant, the conditions, and the plans the conditions list. There is no statutory reissue power sitting behind it.

In practice most authorities will send out a corrected notice where the slip is plainly clerical. Transposed digits, a misspelt street, a missing reason for a condition that was reported to committee. The corrected notice usually carries the original decision date and the change is recorded against the file on the statutory planning register. Keep both versions. If the permission is later relied on for a lawful commencement or sold with the land, the pair of notices is the evidence of what happened.

That pragmatism runs out as soon as the correction alters what is permitted. A different drawing is a different scheme. At that point the authority needs a formal route, and so do you.

The statutory correction procedure and its reach

Sections 56 to 59 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 create a power to correct errors in decisions taken by the Secretary of State or by a person appointed to decide on their behalf. That covers appeal decisions, recovered appeals and called-in applications. It does not cover a decision notice issued by a council.

The power is confined to a "correctable error", which the Act defines as an error in the decision document or in the record of the decision that is not part of any reasons given for the decision. So an inspector's arithmetic in a condition can be put right. The inspector's planning judgement cannot.

Three features matter when you are deciding whether to use it:

1. The correction must be requested in writing, or the decision maker must give notice before acting on their own initiative, so nothing happens quietly.
2. The power is exercisable only within the period during which the decision could be challenged, which makes the request urgent rather than something to raise at the next convenient moment.
3. Where a correction is made, a correction notice is issued and the decision takes effect from the date of that notice. The six-week window for a challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 runs again from there. Where the request is refused, a notice recording the refusal is issued instead.

The approved plans list

This is where most money is lost. The plans condition defines the permitted scheme, so if it lists the superseded revision, the superseded revision is what you may build. Building the later drawing is a breach of condition, whatever the officer report says.

Section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 handles the straightforward substitution: same scheme, corrected reference. The application fee is small relative to the exposure and there is no third party publicity requirement. Support it with the submission history, the consultation drawings, and the Planning Statement that accompanied the application, because together those show what the authority actually assessed.

Where the drawings differ in substance, section 96A will not carry it and you are into section 73. Remember that section 73 cannot be used to extend the time limit for implementation, and it cannot rewrite the description of development.

Errors in the description of development

The description is the grant. Get it wrong and the permission authorises something other than the scheme on the drawings, which is the one error that tends to reach a court rather than a case officer.

Section 96A is a power to make non-material changes to a permission. It is not a general power to rewrite the description, and authorities take markedly different positions on how far it stretches. Ask the case officer in writing which route the authority will accept, and set out why the change leaves the development materially unchanged. If the answer is a fresh application, that is usually the lower risk answer anyway, because a correction the authority doubts is a correction an objector can attack.

A description that was wrong from validation raises a second problem. The publicity and consultation ran against the wrong words, so putting the description right can require the process to be run again, as it does when plans are amended during determination.

Where a fresh application is the only answer

Three situations, reliably:

• The notice grants or refuses something the decision maker did not decide, for example a refusal issued against a committee resolution to approve.
• The permission relates to the wrong land.
• A condition is fundamental to the grant and cannot be varied without changing the development permitted.

Cross-boundary sites deserve a specific mention. Where a site straddles two authorities and each issues its own notice, the two notices can drift apart on conditions or on the description, and correcting one does not correct the other. The sequencing is set out in more detail for sites that need applications to two councils.

Checking the notice on the day it arrives

Twenty minutes, on receipt, before the file is closed:

1. Read the description of development against the application form, word for word.
2. Check every drawing number and revision suffix in the plans condition against your own submission schedule.
3. Confirm the time limit condition is present and correctly worded.
4. Identify every pre-commencement condition and the trigger for each, because a missed trigger is not curable by correction.
5. Check that each condition has a reason and that the reason matches the condition.
6. Diarise the six-week challenge window and, for a permission you intend to implement, the date on which the first condition bites.
7. Treat the Community Infrastructure Levy liability notice as a separate document with its own errors and its own deadlines.

Anything wrong goes to the case officer in writing the same week, with the correction you want and the route you think applies. Errors raised before commencement get fixed. Errors raised after a foundation is poured get argued about.

If you are assembling the supporting documents for a fresh or amended application, you can browse the 66 PlanScope report types and start a draft to see what the authority will expect in the pack.

This is general guidance, not legal advice, so 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.