Outline or full permission: deciding by scheme scale

The outline versus full permission scale question is really a question about who carries the design risk and when the land changes hands. Outline permission establishes that development of a stated amount and use is acceptable in principle on that site, and leaves the detail to a later application. Full permission settles everything at once. On a scheme of five houses the extra cost of going straight to full is small and the certainty is worth having. On 300 homes across three phases, taking the whole thing to full detail before you know whether the principle is accepted is an expensive way to find out.

Somewhere between those two the calculation flips, and it flips earlier than most people assume.

What outline permission actually fixes

An outline application still has to say a good deal. The procedure order requires it to state which of the reserved matters are not being applied for, and to supply information on the use of the land, the amount of development proposed, indicative access points, and the upper and lower limits for the height, width and length of each building.

The five reserved matters are access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale. You may reserve all five or some of them, and reserving fewer makes the outline more useful and the application harder.

What an outline permission fixes, and what it does not:

Time limits matter here. The default position under the Act is that the reserved matters application must be made within three years of the outline permission, and development must begin within two years of the final approval of reserved matters. A full permission runs for three years from grant. Conditions can vary those periods, so read the decision notice rather than relying on the default.

Parameter plans and their consequences

Parameter plans are the mechanism by which an outline permission acquires teeth. They typically fix development zones, maximum and minimum building heights by zone, access points, the primary route alignment, areas of green infrastructure and any land safeguarded for a school or other use.

Draw them too tight and you have taken on the obligations of a full application without the benefit. A maximum ridge height set at the exact height of your indicative scheme leaves no room for a change in floor-to-ceiling heights or a level adjustment at reserved matters stage, and the only way out is a section 73 application.

Draw them too loose and the authority will either refuse for lack of certainty or impose conditions that reimpose the certainty in a form you did not choose. Officers who cannot tell from the submission what the site will look like tend to assume the worst.

The judgement that works is to fix what the planning case depends on and leave the rest. If the acceptability of the scheme rests on a 15 m landscaped buffer to the eastern boundary and a three storey maximum along the lane, fix those two things precisely and keep the internal layout indicative. Where environmental impact assessment is involved, the parameters have to be drawn so that the Environmental Statement assesses the realistic worst case within them, which is the approach that follows from the Rochdale cases on outline applications for major development.

Cost saved at the first stage

Less than people hope. The technical evidence base is driven by the site, not by the application type, so an outline application on a sensitive site still needs the ecology, flood risk, drainage, transport, heritage and arboricultural work. What you save is detailed architectural design, the engineering drawings, and the elevational and landscape detail.

On a scheme of around twenty to fifty homes that saving is real but modest, because the design work for a standard house type layout is not the dominant cost. On a scheme of several hundred homes with bespoke house types, a landscape masterplan and an engineered levels strategy, the saving is substantial.

Fees cut the other way at some scales. An outline application is charged on site area while a full application for housing is charged per dwelling, so a low density scheme on a large site can cost more at outline than at full, and a dense scheme on a small site costs less. Add the reserved matters fee, which is payable later, and the two-stage route is usually more expensive in total. Take the current figures from the national fee schedule, since they were uplifted in December 2023 and are indexed annually from 1 April.

Risk transferred to reserved matters

This is the heart of the decision. An outline permission does not guarantee that a reserved matters application will be approved, and a refusal at that stage is appealable but costs a year.

The risks worth pricing:

1. Policy change between the two stages. Reserved matters are determined against the policy in force at the time, so a new local plan, a new design code or a new national standard can bite on a scheme whose principle was established years earlier.
2. Officer change. The person who negotiated the outline may not be the person who determines the reserved matters, and the understandings that were never written into a condition do not survive.
3. Conditions on the outline that turn out to be harder than they read. A condition requiring a design code to be approved before any reserved matters application is a gate you have to pass through first.
4. Technical requirements that have moved, particularly in drainage, fire safety and energy, where standards have changed repeatedly.
5. The biodiversity gain condition, which attaches to the permission and, for outline schemes, allows the gain plan to be approved phase by phase. That flexibility is useful, but the baseline is set at a fixed point and a long gap between stages can mean the site has changed.

The way to manage all five is to write the outline conditions with the reserved matters application in mind, and to keep a written record of what the parameters were intended to permit. A thorough Planning Statement at outline stage is the document a later officer will read to understand what was agreed.

Where land value needs certainty

Land transactions drive more of this choice than planning judgement does.

A promoter with an option agreement wants outline permission, because it is the least costly route to a planning consent that lifts the land value, and the purchaser will take the detail forward. A housebuilder buying with permission wants either a full permission or an outline with reserved matters approved, because its appraisal depends on house types it can build and a programme it can rely on.

So the question becomes: who is selling, and what will the buyer pay for. An outline permission with loose parameters and a long list of pre-start conditions is worth noticeably less per plot than one with an approved design code and a discharged drainage condition. Promoters who understand that spend money discharging conditions before marketing, and it usually pays.

Where the vendor is a landowner selling after permission, a full permission removes the buyer's reserved matters risk and tends to command a better price per plot on smaller sites. On large sites, buyers expect to do the detailed design themselves and may discount a full permission that commits them to someone else's house types.

Hybrid applications on larger sites

A hybrid application seeks full permission for part of the site and outline for the rest. It is the standard approach on schemes delivered over several phases, and it works because it lets you start on site while the later phases remain flexible.

The typical structure takes full permission for the spine road, the drainage infrastructure, the site-wide earthworks and the first phase of homes, with outline permission for the remaining phases against parameter plans. Early delivery funds the infrastructure, the section 106 triggers can be tied to phases, and the authority gets certainty on the parts that matter first.

Two cautions. The description of development has to be drafted with care, because it defines what is full and what is outline, and it cannot be altered by a later section 73 application. And the conditions need to distinguish clearly between those applying to the full element and those applying to the outline element, or you end up discharging conditions for phase four before starting phase one. How authorities police phase boundaries is covered in the note on phasing a large scheme without gaming thresholds.

Permission in principle as a third route

For small housing schemes there is a third option. Permission in principle, introduced by the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and its implementing order, establishes the principle of housing development on a site, followed by a technical details consent that settles the rest. It is available on application for minor housing development and through entries on a brownfield land register.

It is narrower than outline permission. Permission in principle covers use, amount and location only, and the technical details consent stage then assesses everything else. It is faster and less costly at the first stage, and it does not suit sites with significant constraints, because the constraints have to be resolved at the second stage anyway.

For a site of up to nine homes with an unclear policy position, it is a useful way to test the principle without committing to a full evidence base.

Choosing by scale and by purpose

A rough rule, offered as a starting point rather than a formula.

Up to around ten homes, go full. The design cost is low, the certainty is worth more than the saving, and the eight week determination period is faster than two stages.

Ten to fifty, go full unless you are selling the land or the policy position is uncertain. A Design and Access Statement and detailed drawings at this scale are not where the money goes.

Fifty to a few hundred, outline with carefully drawn parameter plans, or hybrid if infrastructure delivery is on the critical path.

Above that, hybrid is usually the only sensible structure, and where the scheme is environmental impact assessment development the Environmental Statement has to assess the worst case within the parameters. An Environmental Impact Assessment must be prepared by competent experts under the 2017 Regulations, and a drafted document is a starting point for that team rather than a substitute for it.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. To see which documents either route is likely to need, enter the site postcode on PlanScope.

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