Extending the life of a planning permission

There is no application to extend a planning permission in England. That route existed briefly and was withdrawn, and section 73 cannot be used to lengthen a time limit because section 73(5) expressly forbids it. So the realistic answer to extend planning permission cost is a choice between two things: make a lawful start before the permission lapses, or apply again for the same scheme and accept that it will be assessed against today's policy rather than the policy that granted it.

On most sites the lawful start costs less. It is also the one that goes wrong most often, because a start made while a pre-commencement condition is outstanding is not a start at all.

Why permissions lapse and when

A full planning permission carries a condition requiring the development to begin within three years of the grant, under section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The authority can specify a different period, and some do, so read the condition rather than assuming three years.

Outline permissions work differently under section 92. The usual arrangement is that applications for approval of reserved matters must be made within three years, and the development must begin within two years of final approval of the last reserved matter. A phased outline permission can carry bespoke periods.

Once the period expires, the permission is gone. There is no grace period and no discretion.

Whether an extension application exists

It does not, and the confusion is understandable. Between 2009 and 2012 a temporary procedure allowed applications to extend the time limit on permissions granted during the financial crisis. A further temporary route operated in 2020 for permissions lapsing during the pandemic, with an additional environmental approval stage. Both have expired.

What remains is a fresh application for the same development, sometimes described as a renewal, which it is not in any legal sense. It is a new application, determined on current policy, and that is where the cost sits.

The policy gap is the thing to price. A permission granted four years ago was assessed before mandatory biodiversity net gain, before the current Building Regulations uplift, and under a local plan that may since have been replaced. A new permission granted today is subject to the biodiversity gain condition, which means the statutory metric, a biodiversity gain plan and a 30-year management commitment that the original scheme never carried. The Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment has to be completed by a competent person under the Environment Act 2021 regime, and a draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute.

Making a lawful start to keep the permission alive

A permission that has been lawfully begun does not expire. The authority's remaining power is a completion notice under section 94 of the Act, which is rarely used and which requires confirmation by the Secretary of State.

The sequence that works:

1. Read every condition on the permission and list the pre-commencement ones.
2. Apply to discharge each pre-commencement condition and get the written approvals in hand. Allow eight weeks, and longer where a survey season governs the answer.
3. Check whether any section 106 obligation triggers on commencement, because it will.
4. Submit a community infrastructure levy commencement notice before any work starts, where the development is liable. Starting without one forfeits instalments and relief and attracts a surcharge.
5. Carry out a material operation and record it: dated photographs, a site diary, the contractor's invoice and a note of who was present.
6. Write to the authority afterwards stating what was done and when, enclosing the evidence.

That last step is not required by statute. It is worth doing anyway, because the dispute, when it comes, is about what happened three years earlier and the contemporaneous record is what settles it.

What counts as a material operation

Section 56(4) of the Act lists them. Any work of construction in the course of erecting a building. Any work of demolition. Digging a trench that is to contain the foundations or part of them. Laying an underground main or pipe to the foundations. Any operation in the course of laying out or constructing a road or part of one. And a change in the use of land amounting to material development.

The common failure is doing something that looks substantial but falls outside the list. Clearing the site and erecting hoarding costs real money and starts nothing.

Costs of a fresh application against a lawful start

Neither option has a single price, but the cost structures are different enough to compare.

A fresh application costs the planning fee, which is set by national regulations and indexed annually, so take the figure from the current schedule rather than from the last project. Some application types attract exemptions or a free-go, which is worth checking against the rules set out in the guide to planning fee exemptions and the free go. Then add the supporting documents that have to be new or updated: ecology surveys with their seasonal windows, the biodiversity metric and gain plan, an updated energy and overheating assessment against current Building Regulations, a drainage strategy using current climate change allowances, and a planning statement addressing the current development plan. On a small residential scheme that package is usually the larger part of the cost, and the surveys can add months.

A lawful start costs the discharge-of-condition applications, the professional time to assemble them, and the physical works themselves. On a scheme with a deep foundation trench and a long access road, those works are not trivial. On a scheme where a single trench on the approved footprint will do, they are modest.

The decisive factor is usually programme rather than money. A fresh application that triggers a bat emergence survey season can push a start date out by the better part of a year.

Risks of a minimal start

Three risks deserve naming.

The first is the condition problem. Works carried out while a pre-commencement condition remains undischarged are works in breach of condition, and on the established approach those works do not constitute a lawful start. The permission then lapses with a trench in the ground. This is the trap described in the guide to the cost of a pre-commencement condition you cannot discharge, and it is the single most common way a start fails.

The second is evidential. A trench dug by two people on a wet afternoon with no photographs and no invoice is hard to prove four years later when a purchaser's solicitor asks.

The third is financial. Commencement triggers community infrastructure levy liability and the obligations in any section 106 agreement. A start made purely to preserve the permission can bring forward a levy payment and a set of obligations years before the scheme is funded, and in some cases the levy bill exceeds the cost of a fresh application.

So the minimal start is not always the right answer. It is the right answer where the conditions can be discharged, the levy position is manageable and the policy gap would be expensive to bridge.

Deciding six months before expiry

Six months is the realistic decision point, and the review takes an afternoon.

Pull the decision notice and the condition schedule. Identify the expiry date and diarise it. List the pre-commencement conditions and ask, for each, whether it can be discharged in time and what evidence it needs. Check the levy liability and whether a commencement notice and relief claim are in place. Check the section 106 triggers. Then price both routes and pick one.

Where the answer is a fresh application, start the ecology work immediately, because survey seasons do not move. Where the answer is a lawful start, book the groundworks contractor for a date that leaves four weeks of contingency before expiry.

The one position to avoid is arriving at week two before expiry with an undischarged drainage condition and a contractor who cannot attend. At that point there is no good option left.

You can compare the cost of drafting the supporting documents for a fresh application on the PlanScope pricing page, and see the full document list in the report index.

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.