Getting a planning obligation released once complete

A section 106 obligation is performed when the thing it required has been done, but performance and release are separate events. The deed is registered as a local land charge under section 106(11) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and it stays on the register until someone asks the authority to deal with it. A buyer's solicitor searching the register two years after practical completion sees the charge, not your evidence of compliance, and the sale stalls while you go looking for a letter nobody wrote.

The fix is procedural and unglamorous. Start it before you need it.

Which obligations are actually spent

Read the deed and sort the obligations into three groups.

Spent on performance: financial contributions once paid, off-site works once completed and certified, submission of a travel plan or management plan once approved, transfer of land or open space once registered.

Live until a trigger: contributions due on a later occupation threshold, phased highway works, monitoring fees payable annually while a travel plan runs.

Permanent by design: affordable housing tenure and nomination rights, restrictions on occupation such as age or local connection, holiday occupancy restrictions on tourism units, agricultural or rural worker ties, management company obligations for open space in perpetuity, and restrictions on further subdivision.

Nobody releases the third group. Asking for it wastes the goodwill you need for the first two, so be explicit in your letter about which clauses you say are spent and why.

Asking the council to confirm compliance

Write obligation by obligation, quoting the clause number, describing what was required, and attaching the evidence. Payment references and bank confirmations for contributions. The authority's own approval letters for plans and strategies. Completion certificates and adoption correspondence for works. Land Registry title entries where land was transferred.

Many authorities run a monitoring function with a published fee for a compliance letter. Some deeds contain a clause requiring the authority to provide written confirmation within a stated period when asked. If yours does, cite it in the opening paragraph.

What you want back is a letter that identifies the deed by date and parties, lists the clauses, and states that each has been complied with. A letter saying the council has no record of outstanding matters is weaker, and some buyers' solicitors will not accept it.

Send the request to the section 106 monitoring team rather than to the case officer. On a development consented six or seven years ago the case officer has often left, and the monitoring team holds the payment ledger that actually answers the question. Where the authority charges a fee, pay it at the point of asking. Requests that arrive without the fee sit in a queue until somebody notices, and nobody will ring you about it.

Getting the entry off the register

Confirmation of compliance and cancellation of the land charge are different steps, and councils frequently do the first and forget the second.

Where every obligation in a deed is spent, ask the authority to apply to cancel the entry. Where some obligations survive, the honest outcome is a deed of variation or partial release that records what has gone and what remains, which is more useful to a buyer than a letter, because it binds the authority.

Then check the register yourself. Responsibility for local land charges registers has been moving to HM Land Registry, so confirm which body holds the register for that area and search it after the council says the matter is dealt with. A council email is not evidence that the entry has been removed.

Part release on a phased site

On a site built out in phases by different parties, the practical need is to release completed phases without touching the rest. Good deeds anticipate this with a phase-by-phase release mechanism and a plan identifying each phase. Older deeds often do not.

Where the mechanism is missing, a deed of partial release is negotiated, usually alongside the sale of the completed phase. Expect the authority to want the outstanding obligations apportioned rather than simply lifted from the sold land, because releasing land from a charge reduces the security behind the remaining obligations. Mortgagee consent is normally required, and the lender's solicitor will need lead time.

This is the same drafting discipline that governs the affordable housing tenure split, where the obligations attach to identified plots rather than to the site as a whole.

What a purchaser's solicitor will ask for

Assemble the pack once and reuse it:

• A certified copy of the deed with any variations.
• The council's compliance letter, clause by clause.
• Receipts and payment references for every contribution.
• Approval letters for every plan, scheme or strategy required by the deed.
• Evidence of completion and adoption for off-site works.
• A current local land charges search showing the position.
• Separate receipts for CIL, which is a different regime under the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 and is not covered by a section 106 compliance letter.

Missing evidence is the reason these exchanges drag. Councils reorganise, officers move, and email archives get culled. The file you keep is more reliable than theirs.

Build it as the development proceeds rather than at the end. Every time a contribution is paid or a scheme approved, file the evidence in a folder named after the deed, with the clause number in the filename. It takes a minute each time and saves a month later. On a site expected to change hands before build-out, hand that folder over as part of the sale pack and note in the contract that it is provided as evidence of compliance rather than as a warranty.

When the council will not respond

Chase in writing, escalate to the monitoring officer or the head of development management, and use the council's formal complaints procedure if silence continues. Keep everything, because a documented trail is what makes the next step credible.

Section 106A gives two routes. Modification or discharge by agreement, available at any time, which is what a cooperative authority will use. Or an application to the authority once five years have passed since the obligation was entered into, with a right of appeal to the Secretary of State if the authority refuses or fails to determine it. The statutory test on that route is whether the obligation continues to serve a useful purpose, so it fits a spent obligation well and an affordable housing restriction badly.

An honest caveat: the five year route is slow and costs more than most releases are worth, so it works best as a prompt. Say you are preparing an application under section 106A and the compliance letter often appears.

Where you are drafting the documents for the next application rather than closing out the last one, PlanScope can produce first drafts, including the Viability Assessment that usually sits behind an obligation negotiation, and you can enter a postcode on the home page to see what a site is likely to need. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. This is general guidance, not legal advice, so take advice from a solicitor on any deed of release before relying on it.