Enforcement appeal ground (f): the notice asks too much

Ground (f) of an enforcement notice appeal says the notice goes further than it needs to. Not that the development is acceptable, and not that there was no breach, but that the steps required exceed what is necessary to remedy the breach or to remedy the injury to amenity it caused. That is the wording in section 174(2)(f) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and the distinction between those two purposes decides most ground (f) appeals before any evidence is read.

For a landlord who has converted a house, added a dormer or laid out parking without permission, ground (f) is often the realistic appeal. The breach is admitted. The argument is about how much has to come out.

What ground (f) actually argues

Section 173(4) of the 1990 Act gives an authority two choices when it sets out the steps in a notice. It can require steps to remedy the breach, which means making the development comply with a permission, discontinuing a use, or restoring the land to its condition before the breach. Or it can require steps to remedy any injury to amenity that the breach has caused.

Those are different ambitions, and the notice has to say which one it is pursuing. Where the stated purpose is to remedy the breach by restoring the land, a requirement to remove the whole of the unauthorised structure is hard to attack as excessive, because nothing less restores the position. Where the stated purpose is to remedy injury to amenity, the authority has to justify every step by reference to the harm, and that is where ground (f) bites.

Read the notice's requirements against its stated purpose first. Appeals are lost because the appellant argued about amenity when the notice was a restoration notice.

Remedying the breach against remedying the injury

Take a two storey rear extension built a metre deeper than the approved drawings. If the notice requires demolition of the entire extension to remedy the breach, ground (f) has something to work with, because cutting back the rear wall by a metre makes the development comply with the permission. The authority has reached for more than the breach requires.

Now take an unauthorised use of a residential garage as a tyre fitting business. If the notice requires the use to cease, there is nothing to trim. The use either continues or it does not. Ground (f) in that case can only attack ancillary requirements, such as a demand to remove a hardstanding that would have been lawful anyway.

The pattern is that ground (f) works on quantified physical requirements and works badly on the cessation of a use.

Proposing lesser steps that work

The appellant has to put the alternative forward. An inspector is not obliged to go looking for a lesser scheme, and the Court of Appeal in Tapecrown Ltd v First Secretary of State made that point clearly, holding that it is for the appellant to identify the lesser steps while accepting the inspector may consider an obvious alternative. Treat the drafting as your job.

A usable alternative has four features. It is capable of being described precisely enough to go into a varied notice. It removes the harm the authority identified. It is physically and structurally buildable from what is there. And it does not need a fresh planning permission to implement.

That last point catches people. Proposing to reduce an unauthorised dormer to a smaller dormer only works if the smaller dormer would itself be lawful, either as permitted development or under an existing consent.

Evidence a surveyor should prepare

Keep it short and dimensioned. The documents that carry weight are a measured survey of what exists, a drawing of the proposed reduced state, and a structural note confirming the reduction can be built without taking the whole thing down.

Where amenity is the stated purpose, add the evidence that connects the reduction to the harm. If the council's case is overlooking of a neighbouring garden, show the changed sightline. If it is an overbearing effect, show the altered section. The arguments mirror those in an ordinary refusal, which neighbour amenity refusals on overlooking and overbearing effect sets out in more detail.

Costs matter less than people assume. The fact that compliance is expensive is not a ground (f) point, because expense does not make a requirement excessive in planning terms. Save it for ground (g) and the compliance period.

Interaction with ground (a) on the merits

Ground (a) argues that planning permission ought to be granted for what has been done. It carries a deemed planning application and the fee that goes with it, and it puts the planning merits in issue.

Running (a) and (f) together is normal and sensible. They are not in tension: ground (a) says let it stay, ground (f) says if it cannot stay in full, this much should come out rather than all of it. Where the money for the deemed application fee is tight, think about which is the stronger case. An argument that was always going to fail on the merits is not improved by paying for it.

One trap sits in section 173(11). Where a notice could have required the breach to be remedied in full but requires something less, planning permission is treated as granted for what is left standing. Winning ground (f) can therefore regularise the residual development, which is usually welcome and occasionally not what the appellant expected.

How inspectors have varied notices

Section 176(1) lets an inspector correct a defect or vary the terms of a notice, provided no injustice is caused to the appellant or the authority. In practice that means a varied requirement has to be something both sides had a fair chance to address.

Decisions are indicative rather than binding, and the pattern across them is unsurprising. Inspectors vary notices where the appellant has supplied a drawn alternative and the authority's harm can be addressed by it. They decline where the alternative is vague, where it would need its own permission, or where it was raised so late that the authority could not respond.

If you want a variation, give the inspector the words to put in the notice.

Drafting the alternative requirement

Write the replacement requirement as the authority would have written it. Numbered steps, each one an instruction a reasonable person could carry out without further advice, cross-referenced to a drawing with a number and a revision.

A workable form runs along these lines:

1. Reduce the depth of the rear extension to 3m measured from the original rear wall, as shown on drawing 104 revision B.
2. Make good the roof, rainwater goods and external finishes to match the retained structure.
3. Remove all resulting materials from the land.

Each step is testable, which is what the enforcement officer needs when the compliance period ends. Vague requirements produce arguments later and are a poor outcome even when you win.

An illustrative example

An investor converts a three bedroom house into four studio flats without permission and also raises the rear outrigger roof. The notice requires reversion to a single dwelling and removal of the roof alteration. On ground (a) the investor argues the flats are acceptable. On ground (f) the alternative offered is reinstatement of the original roof pitch only, with a drawing, on the basis that the roof alteration and the unauthorised conversion are separate matters and the roof could be made to comply without demolition. This example is illustrative and is not a prediction of any appeal outcome.

Before any of this, read the notice itself with the same care you would give a refusal notice, because the allegation, the stated purpose and the requirements are three separate things and errors in any of them can be the appeal. A Planning Statement addressing the merits still does the work on ground (a), and neighbours retain their own role once an appeal starts, as what objectors can do once a planning appeal starts describes.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Enforcement appeals have strict deadlines and the grounds interact, so take advice from a qualified planning professional on your own notice.

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