Ground (c) of an enforcement appeal and what it must prove

Ground (c) of an enforcement appeal says that the matters stated in the notice, even taking them exactly as the council has described them, are not a breach of planning control. Not that they did not happen. Not that they happened too long ago. That what happened was never something requiring permission in the first place.

It is the ground most often pleaded badly, because appellants treat it as a general protest that the council has overreacted. It is nothing of the sort. Ground (c) is a legal argument with a factual foundation, the burden sits on the appellant, and the standard is the balance of probabilities.

Where the grounds come from

Section 174(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 lists seven grounds, lettered (a) to (g). Ground (a) is the planning merits, and it brings a deemed planning application and a fee with it. Ground (b) denies that the matters occurred. Ground (c) denies that they amount to a breach. Ground (d) is immunity through the passage of time. Ground (e) is defective service. Grounds (f) and (g) attack the steps required and the compliance period.

You have to lodge before the date the notice takes effect, which will be at least 28 days after service. Miss that and section 285 shuts the door: you cannot then challenge the notice's validity on any ground that was available under section 174. There is no discretion to extend.

State the grounds and the facts you rely on when you appeal. Vague pleading is the first thing an inspector notices.

What ground (c) actually asserts

Three arguments account for most successful ground (c) appeals.

The activity is not development at all. Section 55 defines development as building, engineering, mining or other operations, or a material change of use. Internal works that do not affect the external appearance of a building fall outside it. So does a change of use that is not material, which is a question of fact and degree rather than of labels.

The activity is permitted development. If the works fall within a class in Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order 2015 and satisfy every limitation and condition, permission is granted by the Order and there is no breach. This is where most householder ground (c) cases sit, and where most of them fail, because a single limitation has been missed.

The use has not changed in planning terms. A change within the same use class is not development by virtue of section 55(2)(f), and an intensification of an existing use is only a breach where it amounts to a material change. For a landlord, the live question is usually whether occupation by a particular number of unrelated occupiers has taken the property out of Class C3 and into Class C4, or into a sui generis house in multiple occupation.

Evidence that no breach has occurred

Documentary evidence, dated, contemporaneous and capable of being checked. That is the whole of it.

For an operational development argument, the useful material is drawings showing what existed before, building control records, and photographs with verifiable dates. For a use argument, it is tenancy agreements, council tax records, electoral roll entries, utility accounts, licensing records and the correspondence with the council.

Witness statements matter, but they work best as the connective tissue between documents rather than as the case itself. A statutory declaration from the owner saying the arrangement has always been the same, unsupported by paperwork, does not discharge the burden.

Deal with the council's evidence directly. If an officer's site visit note records six separate tenancies, say what the note got wrong and produce the agreements. Silence reads as acceptance.

Where ground (c) and ground (d) diverge

Ground (d) concedes the breach and argues that no enforcement action could be taken when the notice was issued, because the relevant period had expired. The two grounds look for different facts.

The immunity periods themselves are in flux. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 extended enforcement time limits in England to ten years, and the transitional arrangements matter for breaches that began before the change, so check the commencement position for the date your client's activity started rather than assuming a single rule applies.

Running grounds in the alternative

Pleading both is normal and sensible. Inspectors take the grounds in a set order and the appeal ends as soon as one succeeds, so a strong ground (c) is worth putting first even though the lettering runs the other way.

What damages a case is telling two stories. If your ground (d) evidence says the six-person occupation started in 2013, your ground (c) argument cannot rest on the property never having been in multi-occupation. Set out one set of facts, then explain what each ground makes of them.

Think carefully before adding ground (a). It brings a fee and it signals that you accept permission is required, which cuts across ground (c). Some appellants still add it as a fallback because losing on (c) with no merits case means losing outright. That is a judgement about appetite for risk, and it should be a conscious one.

The costs risk of a weak ground

Costs at appeal follow unreasonable behaviour rather than the result. Running a ground with no reasonable prospect, or producing no evidence at all to support one, is capable of being unreasonable, and councils do apply.

The pattern that attracts an award is familiar: a ground (c) pleaded in a single line, no evidence served, then abandoned at the start of the hearing after the council has prepared to meet it. If you are going to drop a ground, drop it in writing and early.

Weak grounds also cost credibility on the grounds that matter. An inspector who has read three pages of unsupported assertion reads the fourth page differently.

Drafting the statement of case

Write it in four parts and keep them separate.

1. The notice: what it alleges, in its own words, and what it requires.
2. The facts: a dated chronology, each entry tied to a document in the bundle.
3. The law: the specific provision relied on, quoted, with the limitation or condition addressed point by point where permitted development is claimed.
4. The application of the law to the facts, ground by ground.

Paginate the bundle and cross-refer to page numbers. Put the notice, the plan and the council's correspondence at the front. And write the chronology before the argument, because it usually tells you which ground is actually the strong one.

The discipline is close to reading a decision notice properly: take the council's own words as the starting point and answer them in the order given. If neighbours have been involved, expect representations, and how third parties take part once an appeal starts is worth understanding before you serve.

Where you also run ground (a), the merits case needs the same supporting material as any application, and a properly structured Planning Statement addressing the development plan is the backbone of it.

As an illustrative example, a three-storey terrace let to four unrelated sharers, with a notice alleging a material change of use to a house in multiple occupation, is a ground (c) case if the property has been let that way within Class C4 and no Article 4 direction removes the permitted change. It is not a ground (c) case if the occupancy is seven and the notice is accurate.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which supporting documents a retrospective application would need if the appeal goes against you.

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.