Land Registry and title costs a planning project triggers

Every planning application form carries a set of planning application ownership certificates, and signing the wrong one is among the easiest mistakes to make and one of the more expensive to unpick. The certificate tells the authority who owned the application site during the 21 days before submission and whether those people were told. Get it wrong and the application can be invalid, the permission can be vulnerable to challenge, and a knowingly false certificate is a criminal offence under section 65 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

The title work behind the certificate costs very little. The cost arrives when it is done after the application rather than before.

What each certificate says

Four certificates appear on the form, lettered A to D, and they sit in the Development Management Procedure Order 2015.

Certificate A says the applicant owned the whole of the application site throughout the 21 days before the application, and that none of it is an agricultural holding. It is the only one that involves no notice to anybody.

Certificate B says somebody else owned part or all of the site, the applicant knows who, and notice has been served on all of them.

Certificate C is for a mixed position: some owners known and served, others not identifiable despite reasonable steps, with a notice published in a local newspaper to cover the gap.

Certificate D is the all-unknown case, again with reasonable steps taken and a newspaper notice published.

"Owner" has a specific meaning here. It covers the freeholder and any leaseholder with at least seven years of the term unexpired. A monthly tenant is not an owner for this purpose, and a tenant on an eight year lease is.

Notice, timing and the 21 day window

The notice is a prescribed form, and it has to go to anyone who was an owner at any point in the 21 days before the application is submitted. That phrasing catches a sale that completed a fortnight before you applied, which is a common trap on sites assembled in stages.

Where a newspaper notice is needed under certificate C or D, it must be published within the same window rather than whenever the paper has space. Local papers print on a weekly cycle, so build a fortnight into the programme for that alone.

Serving notice is not asking permission. An owner who objects does not block the application, and the authority will determine it on planning merits regardless. What the notice does is prevent the owner later arguing that a permission over their land was granted without their knowledge.

The agricultural holdings question

The same part of the form asks whether any part of the site is or was part of an agricultural holding in the 21 day window. If it is, notice goes to every agricultural tenant, whether the tenancy sits under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 or as a farm business tenancy under the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995.

Applicants buying paddocks, former farmyards and barns routinely answer no to this because the land is not being farmed today. The question is about the tenancy, not about current activity. A grazing licence may or may not amount to an agricultural tenancy depending on its terms, and if the answer is unclear the safe course is to ask the seller for the agreement and read it.

Where a barn conversion under Class Q is in play, the agricultural history is doing double duty, since the prior approval route depends on the building having been in agricultural use on a qualifying date. The title and tenancy paperwork that proves the certificate also supports that case.

What the title work actually costs

This is the part that surprises people, because it is small.

An official copy of the register and the title plan is available from HM Land Registry for a few pounds per title and downloads the same day. A search of the index map identifies whether a parcel is registered at all, which matters on old farm land and on strips of verge. Those two searches tell you the registered proprietor, the extent of the title, and whether there are entries in the charges register pointing to covenants, easements or rights of way.

The copy register will refer to deeds that are not reproduced on it. Getting the filed deed containing a covenant is a separate request and is where the solicitor's time starts. Budget for a conveyancer to read the title rather than for the searches themselves, because the searches are trivial and the interpretation is not.

Compare that with the cost of discovering the problem late. A ransom strip across the only access, a covenant restricting the land to agricultural use, or a right of way along the line of your proposed driveway will each stop a scheme that already has planning permission. Our note on budgeting for CIL and the exemption paperwork covers another cost that lands after the decision, and the principle is the same: the paperwork costs little when it is early.

Covenants, easements and the limits of a permission

A planning permission does not override a private right. It is permission from the state for a change of use or for building works, and it says nothing about whether you are contractually entitled to do it.

Restrictive covenants bind the land and can be enforceable decades after the original parties have gone. Where one blocks the scheme, the route is an application to the Upper Tribunal under section 84 of the Law of Property Act 1925 to discharge or modify it, which is slow and contested. Indemnity insurance is the usual commercial answer where the risk is remote, and applying for planning permission first can actually make that insurance harder to obtain, because it advertises the intention.

Easements cut the other way. Your scheme may need a right you do not have, typically a drainage connection across a neighbour's land or an access over a shared yard. Public sewer connections have their own statutory route, but a private drain crossing third party land does not. Identify the need at design stage, because negotiating a right after permission is granted hands the other side all the bargaining power.

Doing the title work before the application

1. Pull the official copy and title plan for the application site and for every adjoining parcel the scheme touches, including the access.
2. Compare the title plan with the red line you intend to draw. They disagree more often than you would expect, particularly on verges, lanes and back access strips.
3. Read the charges register and order any filed deeds that are referred to.
4. Establish whether any part is subject to an agricultural tenancy, and get the agreement rather than relying on what you are told.
5. Serve the prescribed notices and keep the proof, then complete the certificate to match what you actually did.

If a certificate turns out to be wrong after submission, tell the case officer rather than waiting. Authorities will usually accept a corrected certificate with fresh notice and restart the consultation period, which costs weeks. Discovery after the decision is worse, because a permission granted on a false certificate can be challenged.

The narrative documents that go with the application, the Planning Statement and the Design and Access Statement among them, are the part most people pay a consultant for, while the title work is the part they skip. That is backwards. Drafting support for the statements is available at PlanScope pricing of one free report, £50 per report, or £150 per month on the Professional tier, which leaves the budget to put a conveyancer on the title.

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.