Development by water and sewerage undertakers

When a pumping station, a kiosk or a new length of sewer appears on the edge of a village, the first question neighbours ask is why there was no planning application. Often there was not one, because Part 13 of Schedule 2 to the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 grants water and sewerage undertakers permission for a range of development connected with their statutory functions.

Those rights are narrower than they look, and knowing where the edges sit is the difference between an objection that lands and one that goes nowhere.

What Part 13 permits and for whom

Part 13 is headed water and sewerage, and it grants rights to two categories of body: water undertakers and sewerage undertakers, as those terms are defined in the Water Industry Act 1991.

That definition matters more than anything else in the Part. The rights belong to the appointed undertaker for the area, not to a developer building a scheme, not to a contractor and not to a management company operating a private pumping station on a housing estate. A private drainage installation is ordinary development, assessed in the ordinary way.

The rights cover development required for the purposes of the undertaking. In practice that means the apparatus and structures needed to supply water and to receive, convey and treat waste water: mains, sewers, valve and metering chambers, small kiosks and control cabinets, monitoring equipment, access chambers and works of maintenance and repair.

Each class carries its own limits on size, siting and location, and those limits have been amended over time. Read the consolidated text on legislation.gov.uk for the current figures rather than a summary.

Size and siting limits on structures

The general pattern across the classes is that underground works and small structures are permitted, and buildings are not.

Structures are constrained by dimensions such as ground area, height and capacity, and the numbers differ by class. Where a proposed kiosk or building exceeds the stated limit, the right falls away and a planning application is required. The same happens where the development is not required for the purposes of the undertaking, which is why an office or a depot is treated differently from a pumping station.

Two practical points follow for a neighbour. First, measure. If the structure on site is visibly larger than the limit in the class relied on, that is a question worth putting to the authority's enforcement team. Second, look at what the structure is for. Apparatus serving the network is one thing; a welfare building, a storage compound or a permanent parking area is another.

Mains, sewers and the separate street works regime

Laying a pipe in a public street is not usually a planning matter at all. Undertakers have statutory powers under the Water Industry Act 1991 to lay, inspect, maintain and repair pipes in streets and, subject to notice and compensation provisions, in private land.

Those powers run alongside the street works regime, which controls when and how the road may be opened, how long it may be occupied, and how it must be reinstated. Complaints about noise, hours, traffic management and reinstatement quality belong to the highway authority under that regime rather than to the planning department.

Knowing which regime applies saves considerable frustration. A planning objection to a road being dug up will be closed without action, while the same complaint to the street works team may produce a change to the traffic management or the working hours.

Emergency works and how they are treated

Undertakers can act immediately where there is a risk to supply, to public health or to property, and the permitted development rights and statutory powers both accommodate that.

The usual pattern is that the work proceeds and notice follows. Where a temporary structure is put up during an emergency, there will normally be a requirement to remove it and restore the land once the emergency has passed, within a period set by the class relied on.

If a temporary installation from an emergency is still standing months later, that is the point at which to ask the local planning authority whether the permitted development right still covers it. Temporary rights expire, and what was lawful in week one may not be lawful in month nine.

Protected land and environmental constraints

Permitted development rights in Part 13 are reduced on designated land, in the same way as elsewhere in the Order. Conservation areas, National Parks, National Landscapes, the Broads and World Heritage Sites all attract restrictions, and the precise effect differs by class rather than following a single rule.

Separate regimes apply on top of planning:

• Discharges to a watercourse or to groundwater need an environmental permit from the Environment Agency, with its own public register and consultation
• Works affecting a Site of Special Scientific Interest require Natural England's assent
• Works affecting protected species need the relevant licence, whatever the planning position
• Works to or within the curtilage of a listed building need listed building consent
• Works affecting a main river or a flood defence need a flood risk activity permit

The environmental permitting route is often the more productive one for a community concerned about odour, discharge quality or the ecological effect of a treatment works, because the permit conditions are enforceable by the regulator and the public register is searchable.

Where full permission is required

The rights stop well short of major infrastructure. A new or substantially enlarged waste water treatment works, a reservoir or a large transfer scheme falls outside Part 13, and at sufficient scale a waste water treatment plant is nationally significant infrastructure determined by the Secretary of State under the Planning Act 2008 rather than by the council.

Below that, a full planning application is the route where the size limits are exceeded, where the development is on land the undertaker does not hold for the purposes of its undertaking, where rights have been withdrawn by an Article 4 direction, or where the development is not required for the undertaking at all.

An application of that kind is supported by the usual documents, including a Planning Statement and, depending on the site, odour, noise, ecology and landscape assessments. Where prior approval rather than full permission applies, the prior approval procedure sets out what the authority may and may not take into account, which is a narrower list than most objectors expect. The equivalent regime for telecommunications apparatus under Part 16 shows how differently those matters can be drawn from one Part of the Order to another.

Finding out what is proposed near you

Four sources cover almost everything, and all are free.

1. The local planning authority's online planning register, searching by address and by a wide date range, and including prior approval and notification entries as well as full applications
2. The Environment Agency's public register of environmental permits, for discharge consents and permit variations at treatment works
3. The undertaker's own published plans for the area, which set out investment programmes and the schemes within them
4. The street works register held by the highway authority, which shows notified and approved road works

Where you cannot find an entry and work is underway, ask the local planning authority in writing which permitted development class is being relied on. The answer identifies the class, and the class identifies the limits, which is the only way to know whether what is being built is within the right or outside it.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a development near you would normally 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.