Local Development Order or a permitted development right

Both a local development order and a permitted development right give you planning permission without an application. The difference is who wrote it and how far it reaches. Permitted development rights are national, set by the Secretary of State in Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order 2015, and they apply to every qualifying site in England subject to their own exclusions. A local development order is written by your local planning authority under section 61A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, for an area it draws itself, granting whatever development it chooses to grant.

For a developer scoping a site, that means one question comes first. Is there an order covering this land, and if so, does it grant more than the national classes do?

Who holds the pen

The practical consequence of that table is that national rights are predictable and generic, while orders are unpredictable and specific. You can memorise Part 1 Class A. You cannot memorise the orders in force across 300-odd authorities, and there is no single national register of them, so the only reliable check is the council's planning policy pages plus a written enquiry.

What an order can do that no national class can

This is where orders earn their keep. Because the council writes the grant, it can permit development that Schedule 2 never contemplated.

Three uses recur in England. On employment allocations, an order grants light industrial and storage floorspace within a stated envelope, so occupiers can fit out without applying. In town centres, an order permits a defined list of changes of use and shopfront alterations judged against a design code. On regeneration land, an order grants a masterplan's worth of development with conditions controlling phasing, access and drainage.

An order can also go narrower than the national classes. It can permit something the GPDO excludes on Article 2(3) land, or grant a right that comes with a tighter set of limitations than the national equivalent, which is how some authorities have handled solar canopies over car parks or research campus expansion.

And it can do something a national class cannot: it can attach a planning obligation requirement or a condition calibrated to local drainage or highway evidence, because the council has that evidence in front of it when it makes the order.

Conditions, limitations and the notification step

Neither route is unconditional. Part 1 Class A carries the A.1 limitations on depth, height, eaves and materials, and the A.2 and A.3 conditions on similar external appearance. An order carries whatever the council wrote into it, which is usually more demanding.

Most orders include a compliance step. That might be a notification with drawings, or a prior approval procedure modelled on the national one, giving the council a period to confirm the development falls inside the order. Treat that step as the real gate. Getting it wrong leaves you with development that is a breach of planning control, not development with a defect. The difference between the prior approval route and a full application is set out in prior approval or planning permission: the difference.

Where you are unsure whether a proposal falls inside either grant, an application under section 192 of the 1990 Act for a certificate of lawfulness of proposed use or development answers the question formally. The comparison with a full application is covered in a lawful development certificate or planning permission.

How an order comes into being and how it ends

The procedure sits in the Development Management Procedure Order 2015. The authority prepares a draft order with a statement of reasons, consults, publicises it, considers representations, and adopts it by resolution. It must notify the Secretary of State, who can direct that the order is not made or is revoked. The authority then reports on the order through its monitoring arrangements.

Screening matters at the drafting stage. An order cannot be used to sidestep environmental impact assessment or the habitats regime, so the council has to satisfy itself that the development it is granting does not require assessment, or build the assessment into the order. That is one reason orders tend to cover modest, well-understood development rather than large contested schemes.

Ending is quicker than making. A council can revoke, and the Secretary of State can direct revocation. Compensation provisions under sections 107 and 108 of the 1990 Act can bite where permission granted by a development order is withdrawn and permission is later refused, but the detail is technical and time-limited, so take advice rather than assuming a claim exists.

What neither grant gives you

An order grants planning permission. It grants nothing else. Listed building consent, scheduled monument consent, a European protected species licence, Building Regulations approval, a section 278 highway agreement and a water undertaker's connection agreement all sit outside it.

Community Infrastructure Levy liability can still arise, because CIL attaches to chargeable development including development permitted by a general consent, with its own notification procedure. That trips people up on orders more often than on national rights. The interaction between levy liability and negotiated obligations is explained in section 106 obligations or the levy: which applies.

Biodiversity net gain is worth checking case by case. How the biodiversity gain condition applies depends on the way permission is granted, and Schedule 7A to the 1990 Act sets out the scope and exceptions. Read it rather than assuming an order carries the same obligation as a permission granted on application.

Which one to build a strategy on

If your development fits a national class cleanly, use it. The class is published, the case law is settled and the prior approval procedures are familiar to every officer.

If it does not, an order is worth raising at pre-application stage only where the council already has an interest in bringing the site forward, because orders take officer time and a committee resolution. Employment allocations, council-owned regeneration land and areas with an adopted design code are the places where the answer is sometimes yes.

For anything else, the honest position is that a full application with a properly evidenced supporting pack is faster than persuading an authority to write a bespoke grant. Browse all 66 PlanScope report types and start a draft to scope what that pack contains for your site.

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.