Decision notices: conditions, informatives and reasons

A planning decision notice is a short document that most people read once. It is also the whole of what you are permitted to build, because the permission consists of the description of development, the conditions, and the drawings those conditions list by number and revision. Nothing in the officer's report forms part of it. Nothing in the covering email forms part of it. If the notice lists drawing 203 revision B and you built revision C, you have carried out development without permission.

What forms part of the permission and what does not

Four things make up the grant. The description of development as set out on the notice, the conditions attached to it, any documents or drawings a condition expressly incorporates, and any section 106 agreement entered into alongside it.

The officer's report, the case file, the consultee responses and your own supporting statements sit outside the permission. They are relevant to interpreting it where the notice is unclear on its face, and the courts have been clear that a permission is construed by reading the notice itself in its context rather than by trawling the application papers for what the applicant meant. So an officer report recording that extract plant would be acceptable does not permit extract plant unless the description or a drawing covers it.

The case file is worth obtaining and keeping, because it tells you how the authority reasoned and it is the first thing you will want if a condition's meaning is disputed later. How to get hold of it is covered in our note on getting consultee responses and the officer's case file.

The approved plans condition

This is the condition that matters most, and the one checked least.

It normally reads that the development shall be carried out in accordance with the approved plans, followed by a list. Work through that list the day the notice arrives, against your own drawing register. Three errors are common: a drawing number transposed, a superseded revision listed instead of the current one, and a drawing omitted altogether.

A superseded revision in the condition is the awkward one. The permission then authorises the earlier design, and building the later one is a breach even though the authority approved the later drawings during the application. The fix is an application under section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 for a non-material amendment, which is quick and comparatively inexpensive, or a section 73 application where the difference is more than non-material.

An omitted drawing cuts the other way. If the landscape drawing was never listed, the landscaping is not approved, and a condition requiring landscaping in accordance with the approved plans has nothing to bite on.

Where a Design and Access Statement is expressly listed in the approved documents, its contents become part of what you must build out, which is a reason to write one that describes the scheme accurately rather than aspirationally.

Informatives and what they are worth

Informatives are advisory notes appended after the conditions. They have no legal force as part of the permission, they cannot be enforced through planning enforcement, and a failure to follow one is not a breach of planning control.

They still repay close reading, because they usually point at an obligation that exists under other legislation. Typical informatives flag that Building Regulations approval is separately required, that works affecting a shared wall engage the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, that a licence is needed to place a skip or scaffold on the highway, that bats are protected regardless of any permission, and that the development may be liable for the Community Infrastructure Levy.

The distinction to hold onto is that an informative has no planning consequence and the law it refers to has its own. Ignoring an informative about protected species does not breach the permission and may still be a criminal offence.

Reasons for conditions, and the six tests

Article 35 of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 requires the notice to state clearly and precisely the full reasons for each condition, and to specify the development plan policies relevant to the decision. A condition with no stated reason, or with a reason that does not support it, is vulnerable.

National guidance sets six tests for conditions. They must be necessary, relevant to planning, relevant to the development permitted, enforceable, precise, and reasonable in all other respects. Each of those is a line of argument if you need to challenge a condition.

The tests most often failed in practice are precision and enforceability. A condition requiring materials to be of a high quality cannot be enforced because nobody can say when it is breached. A condition requiring the submission of a scheme without saying by when, or to whose satisfaction, is not precise. Where a condition is imprecise, the practical route is usually a section 73 application to vary it rather than an appeal, unless the condition goes to the heart of the permission.

A condition can also be challenged on appeal within the normal time limits, and the appeal is against the condition alone, leaving the permission intact if it succeeds.

Conditions that must be satisfied before work starts

Conditions requiring something to be approved before development begins are the ones that cause programme damage, and since 2017 they cannot simply be imposed. The authority has to obtain the applicant's written agreement to such a condition before granting permission, with a statutory procedure that allows agreement to be taken as given if the applicant does not respond within the prescribed period.

Read any draft conditions sent to you during the application. That is your opportunity to object to a condition requiring contamination remediation approval before any works at all, when the reasonable trigger is before the construction of foundations.

After the grant, discharge applications take time. Eight weeks is the statutory period and authorities frequently use all of it, so submit the discharge applications in the order your programme needs them rather than all at once, and do not start on site in reliance on a verbal assurance from an officer. Beginning development in breach of a condition requiring prior approval can mean the whole development is unauthorised, not merely that one condition is breached.

Errors on a decision notice and how to put them right

Act quickly on any of these. A corrected notice issued three weeks after the original raises no eyebrows. One issued after you have started on site invites questions about what was built in the interval.

The permission runs with the land

A planning permission benefits the land, not the applicant. Section 75 of the 1990 Act has that effect, so a successor in title takes the permission and its conditions without doing anything.

The exceptions are narrow. A personal permission, imposed by condition and justified in the reasons, is limited to a named person or occupier and lapses when they leave. Obligations in a section 106 agreement bind successors where they are drafted as covenants running with the land, which is almost always, and varying them later is a separate exercise, as our note on varying a section 106 agreement after permission explains.

Time limits are the other inherited feature. Development must normally begin within three years of the grant under section 91, and for outline permissions the clock structure is different, with a period for applying for approval of reserved matters and a shorter period from the final approval. A permission that has not been implemented in time cannot be revived.

What to keep, and in what form

Assemble a single bundle at handover and keep it with the title documents: the decision notice, the stamped approved drawings at the listed revisions, any section 106 agreement with its plans, every discharge of conditions approval with its application reference, any section 96A or section 73 decisions, and the Community Infrastructure Levy liability notice and demand notice if one was issued.

Purchasers' solicitors will ask for all of it, and the document that is always missing is the discharge approval for a condition nobody remembered. A Planning Statement and the rest of the application pack are useful context, and the discharge approvals are the ones with legal consequence.

If you are preparing an application and want to see which supporting documents your site is likely to need before the conditions are drafted, enter the postcode on PlanScope and work through the constraints first.

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.