Ownership certificate A or B on a planning application

Choosing between ownership certificate A or B comes down to one question: at the start of the 21 day period ending with the date of the application, was anyone other than the applicant an owner of any part of the application site. If the answer is no, certificate A applies. If the answer is yes, and you know who they are and have served notice on them, certificate B applies. Get it wrong and the application is either invalid or, worse, decided on a false basis.

Owner has a particular meaning here. It covers the freeholder and any lessee whose lease has at least seven years left to run. A monthly tenant is not an owner for this purpose. A tenant with twelve years remaining is.

Why the certificate matters at validation

Section 65 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and article 13 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 require every application to be accompanied by one of the prescribed certificates. An application submitted without a completed certificate is not valid, and the authority will not register it.

This is one of the most common validation failures on otherwise competent submissions, and it is entirely avoidable. It is also one of the few parts of the application where the applicant is making a formal statement with legal consequences rather than a planning argument.

Validation is also where the rest of the pack is checked, so it is worth submitting the certificate alongside a complete set of documents including a Planning Statement and, where the scale requires one, a Design and Access Statement.

When certificate A is correct

Certificate A states that no person other than the applicant was an owner of any part of the land at the beginning of the 21 day period ending with the date of the application.

That means you own the whole of the red line, in freehold or on a long lease, with no one else holding a relevant interest in any part of it. Three situations defeat it more often than people expect.

A red line drawn to include a verge, a shared access or a strip of adopted highway brings in another owner. A site that includes part of a neighbour's garden, deliberately or through a mapping error, brings in a neighbour. And a property held in one name where the title is actually in joint names, or in a company name, is a false certificate even if the family relationship makes it feel academic.

Check the registered title before signing. Official copies from the Land Registry cost very little and settle the question.

When notice must be served on others

Certificate B states that the applicant has given the requisite notice to everyone who was an owner at the start of that 21 day period, and lists them with the dates of service.

The notice is in a prescribed form, it has to be served on each owner, and it has to be served at least 21 days before the application is made. Serving it on the day you submit does not work, and an authority that spots the dates will treat the certificate as incorrectly completed.

Certificate B is the normal answer on a site assembled from more than one title, on a lease renewal or redevelopment where the freeholder is a pension fund, and on any application made by a developer under option or conditional contract rather than as owner.

Certificates C and D and the newspaper notice

Where an owner cannot be traced after reasonable enquiry, certificates C and D provide a route. Both require a notice published in a newspaper circulating in the locality of the land, again at least 21 days before the application.

Reasonable enquiry is not a formality. A Land Registry search, a search of the index map for unregistered land, enquiries of neighbours and occupiers, and a check of probate records where the owner may have died are all the sort of steps an authority expects to see described. Certificate D on a site where a title search would have produced a name is indefensible.

Unregistered land is the common cause. Older access strips, former railway land, parcels never registered because they have not changed hands since before compulsory registration. In those cases the newspaper route is legitimate and worth using rather than guessing at a certificate A.

Agricultural holdings and the separate certificate

The certificates are accompanied by an agricultural holdings declaration. The applicant has to state whether any part of the land is, or was within the relevant period, part of an agricultural holding, and where it is, notice has to be served on every tenant of that holding.

Farmland let on a farm business tenancy, grazing let under a licence, and land occupied under an older agricultural tenancy all need checking. Developers buying farmland for housing routinely discover a grazing tenant nobody mentioned, and discovering it after the decision is issued is expensive.

The practical step is to ask the vendor for written confirmation of every occupation agreement over the site, including informal ones, before the red line is drawn.

Consequences of a false certificate

Knowingly or recklessly issuing a certificate that is false or misleading in a material particular is an offence under section 65 of the 1990 Act, punishable by a fine. That is the direct consequence, and prosecutions are rare.

The indirect consequences bite harder. An owner who was not notified may ask the authority to revisit the decision, and a permission granted on a materially false certificate is open to legal challenge. A lender's solicitor will find the discrepancy on title during due diligence, and the transaction stops while a fresh application is made with the correct certificate. On a scheme where the permission is the asset, that is the real risk.

Where the position is uncertain, serve notice on anyone who might be an owner and use certificate B. Over-notification carries no penalty. Under-notification does.

Getting it right on a ransom strip

Ransom strips, shared driveways and retained access rights are where this becomes tactical rather than administrative. An applicant whose red line crosses a strip owned by someone else has to notify that owner, which tells them a scheme is coming and strengthens their negotiating position.

The usual response is to redraw the red line so that it covers only land the applicant owns, and to deal with the access by a Grampian style condition requiring the access works to be completed before occupation. That keeps the application valid without notifying the strip owner, because the strip is outside the application site.

It also leaves a permission that cannot be implemented until the strip is acquired or an agreement reached, which the applicant needs to understand before relying on it. Whether the application is then determined by officers or goes to committee is a separate question, and the difference between committee determination and a delegated decision is worth knowing when the ownership position is contentious.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Ownership certificates carry legal consequences and the facts matter. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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