Minded to approve: the gap before your decision notice

A minded to approve resolution is a statement of intent, not a planning permission. When a planning committee resolves to grant permission subject to the completion of a section 106 agreement, the application remains undetermined. Nothing can be built, no condition bites, and the three-year time limit for implementation has not started. The permission comes into existence only when the local planning authority issues the decision notice under article 35 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, and officers will not issue it until the deed is signed.

That gap is where schemes stall. Six weeks is normal. Six months is common. And a few resolutions never convert at all.

What the resolution actually decides

The committee decides two things in one vote. It settles the planning merits, and it delegates authority to an officer, usually the head of planning or the development management manager, to issue the permission once the legal agreement completes. The minute will often add a deadline and a fallback, in the form of delegated authority to refuse if the agreement is not completed within a stated period.

Read the resolution as recorded in the minutes rather than the officer report. The two sometimes differ, because members amend conditions or heads of terms at the meeting. Where a verbal update changed the recommendation, the minute governs.

The resolution does not fix the conditions in final form. Officers routinely tidy wording, add a plans list and correct drafting errors between resolution and issue. What they cannot do is change the substance of what members resolved. If a condition members relied on is deleted, the decision risks challenge on the ground that the permission granted was not the permission authorised.

Why the notice waits for the deed

A section 106 obligation under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is a covenant that runs with the land. It has to be entered into by everyone with a relevant interest, and it has to be in place before the permission is granted, because the obligation is what makes the development acceptable. Issue the permission first and the council has nothing left to hold.

So the sequence is fixed. Draft, agree, execute, then issue. The practical consequence is that your programme depends on solicitors you may not have instructed yet.

Planning Practice Guidance on planning obligations sets out the policy tests and encourages authorities to publish standard templates and timescales. Many do. Ask for the template at validation stage rather than after committee.

What happens during the drafting period

The work splits into legal and planning strands that run badly out of step. On the legal side: title investigation, identifying every party whose consent is needed, agreeing the council's costs undertaking, settling monitoring fees, and completing by deed. On the planning side: pinning down the affordable housing mix, the trigger points for each payment, and the definitions that make the obligations enforceable.

Four things delay most agreements.

1. Title that does not match the red line. Options, overage deeds, unregistered strips and ransom land all have to be dealt with before execution.
2. A mortgagee or superior landlord whose consent nobody asked for at the outset.
3. Affordable housing terms that were never tested with a registered provider, so the delivery mechanism has to be renegotiated.
4. Highway land outside the application site, where a section 278 agreement under the Highways Act 1980 has to be progressed alongside the deed.

The fix for all four is the same, and it is unglamorous. Do the title work before the committee date, not after it. A clear statement of ownership also keeps your ownership certificates consistent with what the deed will say.

New material considerations before the notice is issued

The duty under section 70(2) of the 1990 Act to have regard to material considerations continues until the decision is issued. In Kides v South Cambridgeshire District Council the Court of Appeal held that where a new material consideration arises after a resolution, the officer with delegated authority has to consider whether it is significant enough to require the application to go back to members. The officer cannot simply issue the notice on an out of date view of the planning balance.

Things that commonly arise in the gap:

• A new edition of the National Planning Policy Framework. The Framework was re-issued on 17 August 2026 with policy-coded chapters replacing the earlier paragraph numbering, so any resolution predating that edition rests on citations that no longer exist.
• Adoption of the local plan, or a new five year housing land supply position.
• A change to the biodiversity gain requirements or to the scheme's net gain evidence.
• An appeal decision on a closely comparable site in the same authority.
• A material change to the proposal itself, including anything that would alter the Affordable Housing Statement members were shown.

If you are the applicant, you want officers to form that judgement early and record it. A note on the file saying the officer considered the August 2026 Framework and concluded the balance was unchanged is worth having. The alternative is a judicial review risk sitting over your permission for three months after issue.

When the application goes back to committee

Re-reporting happens for three reasons: the delegated period has expired, the heads of terms have changed, or a new material consideration is judged weighty enough to matter. None of these is automatic, and all three are negotiable with the case officer.

Expect a short update report rather than a fresh assessment. The risk is not usually that members reverse themselves. It is that the membership has changed, local objection has organised in the meantime, and the new report invites a fresh debate on the same facts.

Where the delay is the council's own legal team, say so in writing and ask for the delegated period to be extended by officers rather than letting it lapse.

Reducing the gap before you get to committee

The best resolutions are the ones where the deed is already drafted. Three practical steps:

1. Agree heads of terms with the case officer in writing before the report is drafted, and check them against the regulation 122 tests.
2. Instruct solicitors to prepare an engrossment ahead of the committee date, on the assumption that the recommendation holds.
3. Offer a unilateral undertaking as a fallback. A section 106 obligation can be given by the owner alone, which removes the council's signature from the critical path. Councils dislike it, but it works where the terms are standard and uncontested.

Where the obligation is financial and the viability position is contested, the delay is usually substantive rather than administrative. That is a different problem, and it is solved by getting the Viability Assessment reviewed before committee rather than after.

Getting a stalled resolution moving

Your rights are thinner than you would like. There is no statutory deadline for issuing a notice after a resolution. The realistic options are an appeal against non-determination where the determination period has expired, a formal complaint under the council's own procedure, and escalation to the monitoring officer where the delay is in legal services.

Appealing has a cost. You give up the resolution you won and ask the Planning Inspectorate to start again, which takes months and loses the officer support you had. It is a last resort rather than a tactic, and the trade-offs are set out in more detail in our note on appealing non-determination.

Keep a dated log of every exchange about the draft deed. If the matter ever reaches a costs application or a complaint, the log is the evidence.

While the deed is being settled, the supporting documents for the next scheme are the useful thing to get ahead on. You can browse the report types by category and draft the ones your site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified solicitor 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.