Mineral exploration and Part 17 permitted development

Mineral exploration permitted development sits in Part 17 of Schedule 2 to the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, and it is narrower than most landowners hope. The rights allow boreholes, seismic survey and other excavations carried out to explore for minerals, together with the plant and structures needed to do it, for limited periods and subject to conditions requiring the land to be put back. They do not allow you to start extracting anything.

The authority that matters here is the mineral planning authority, which in a two-tier area is the county council rather than the district. Landowners regularly notify the wrong council and lose weeks.

What Part 17 permits and for how long

The exploration classes cover drilling boreholes, carrying out seismic surveys and making other excavations for the purpose of exploring for minerals, plus the provision on that land or adjoining land of the structures needed for those operations.

Two duration regimes run in parallel. The shorter one is limited to a period of 28 consecutive days at any one location. The longer one permits an operation running beyond that, up to a maximum measured in months rather than weeks, and it carries a prior notification duty to the mineral planning authority. Which one you are in is determined by how long the operations will actually take, not by how long you would like them to take, and an operation that overruns the short period is unauthorised development from the day it does.

The current text of Part 17 is the only place to check the exact periods and limits, because the Order has been amended repeatedly. Read the consolidated version on legislation.gov.uk before designing the programme rather than relying on a secondary summary, including this one.

Notification before operations begin

Where prior notification applies, the developer must notify the mineral planning authority in writing before the development begins, describing the nature of the development and its location, and must then wait out the notice period.

Treat the notification as a document the authority will keep and may quote back at you. It should identify the site by plan, describe each proposed operation, state the intended start date and duration, and say what will happen to the land afterwards. A minerals officer receiving a one-line letter will usually ask for all of that anyway, and the clock does not begin until they have it.

There is a wider point about tone. Mineral exploration rights are the start of a relationship with the authority that will determine any future extraction application, and an exploration phase handled with notice, courtesy to neighbours and clean reinstatement is worth a great deal when the substantive application arrives.

Depth, duration and restoration conditions

Part 17 attaches conditions rather than leaving the land as found. Their common shape is straightforward: when the operations stop, the plant, structures and any excavated material have to be removed, boreholes sealed, and the land restored to its condition before the work started, within a defined period after cessation.

The Order also sets limits on what can be done under the right at all. Those limits are expressed as thresholds on matters including the depth and surface area of excavations, the number of excavations within a given area of land held in one ownership over a period, the height of structures erected, the size of explosive charges used in seismic work, and distances from occupied residential buildings, hospitals and schools. Where a proposal exceeds any of those thresholds the right falls away entirely and planning permission is needed for the whole operation, not just the excess.

Boreholes bring separate duties outside the planning system. A deep boring intended for searching for or abstracting water requires notice to the Environment Agency under the Water Resources Act 1991, and records of deep boreholes are ordinarily supplied to the British Geological Survey. Coal is regulated separately again, with its own permissions for entering or disturbing coal seams. Check each of those before the rig arrives.

Excluded land and designated areas

The Order restricts these rights on sensitive land, and the restrictions do the practical work of keeping exploration away from places where it would cause the most harm. Before assuming the right is available, check whether any part of the operation falls within a National Park, the Broads, a National Landscape, a site of special scientific interest, a scheduled monument or land subject to an Article 4 direction.

Two further gates apply to permitted development generally.

• Where the proposal is Schedule 2 development under the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 and requires environmental impact assessment, the permitted development right does not apply. Deep drilling and extractive operations are within the Schedule 2 categories, so a screening opinion is often the sensible first step.
• Where the operation is likely to have a significant effect on a European site, the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 prevent reliance on the general right without the appropriate assessment and approval.

Protected species law applies regardless. A seismic line through a hedgerow with a badger sett in it is a licensing question before it is a planning question.

Ancillary structures and access tracks

The rights extend to the structures required in connection with the operations, which in practice covers a rig, welfare units, tanks, fencing and a hard standing. The height of what can be put up is limited, and tighter limits apply near an aerodrome.

Access is where exploration schemes most often trip. A temporary private way to reach the drilling position may be within the exploration right, but a new or altered access onto a classified road engages the highway authority separately, and Part 2 of Schedule 2 has its own rules about accesses. Where heavy plant will use a farm gate designed for a tractor, expect the highway authority to have views about visibility splays and mud on the road whatever the planning position.

A Construction Traffic Management Plan is not required for permitted exploration, but drafting one and sending it to the highway authority and the parish council is low-cost insurance against complaints that later colour the extraction application.

Where a full application is unavoidable

Any of the following puts you outside the right and into a planning application to the mineral planning authority: exceeding a stated threshold, operating beyond the permitted duration, working on excluded land, triggering environmental impact assessment, or moving from exploration to winning and working minerals.

The application that follows is a minerals application, assessed against the minerals policies of the development plan and the national minerals guidance, with a supporting evidence base that typically covers landscape, noise, dust, hydrology, traffic, ecology and restoration. A Planning Statement that sets the exploration history out honestly, including what was found and what was restored, starts that application in a better place than one that treats the exploration phase as unconnected history.

Farm and estate owners weighing this against other diversification routes should also look at what the agricultural classes allow, since the tests are quite different from those under Part 6 for small agricultural units.

Evidence of restoration on completion

Photograph everything, before and after, with dates. Record the position of every borehole by coordinate, record how each was sealed, and keep the contractor's records of materials removed and soils replaced.

Then write to the mineral planning authority confirming that the conditions have been met and attaching the evidence. Nobody requires that letter. It is still the least expensive thing you can do, because the alternative is trying to prove compliance from memory four years later when a neighbour raises the old drilling at a committee meeting.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice, and permitted development rights turn on the precise wording of the current Order, so check the position with your mineral planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. A lawful development certificate is the only formal way to confirm that works are lawful. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.