Ownership certificate A or B on the planning form

The ownership certificate a or b planning question has one test behind it: does the applicant own every square metre inside the red line, and is there no agricultural tenant. Yes to both means Certificate A. Anything else means Certificate B, and notice must be served on the other owners. Section 65 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and Article 13 of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 set this out, and an authority will invalidate an application with the wrong certificate without reading anything else in it.

The commonest error on self-build and householder applications is signing Certificate A when the red line crosses a strip of highway verge. That strip belongs to the highway authority, which makes it an owner.

What each certificate declares

Certificate A is a statement that the applicant is the sole owner of all the land to which the application relates, and that none of it forms part of an agricultural holding. It needs no notice to anybody.

Certificate B is a statement that the applicant is not the sole owner, that the applicant knows who the other owners are, and that the requisite notice has been given to each of them. The certificate names them and gives the date notice was served.

The distinction is binary and it is about ownership of land, not about who is applying. A husband applying alone for works to a house in joint names needs Certificate B and must serve notice on his spouse, which strikes people as absurd and is nonetheless the law.

Red line and blue line matter here. The red line encloses the land the application relates to, meaning everything needed for the development including access, parking, visibility splays and drainage runs. A blue line shows other land in the applicant's ownership or control that is not part of the application. Only the red line land drives the certificate.

Who counts as an owner for the purpose

Owner has a defined meaning in this context and it is narrower than everyday usage. It covers the freeholder of the land, and anyone holding a leasehold interest with at least seven years unexpired.

So a tenant on a three-year commercial lease is not an owner for certificate purposes. A leaseholder of a flat with 80 years remaining is. A mortgagee is not an owner. A person with a right of way or a restrictive covenant is not an owner either, though their rights still matter in practice.

That last-but-one row is the trap. If the red line takes in a dropped kerb, a visibility splay over a verge, or a short length of carriageway for a new access, the highway authority is an owner and the application needs Certificate B with notice served on the county or unitary authority as highway authority, not merely consulted as a statutory body.

Serving notice and the 21 day period

Notice must be given to anyone who was an owner at the beginning of the period of 21 days ending with the date of the application. So the ownership position is fixed by reference to that window, which is why a Land Registry search done three months earlier is not good enough on a site where interests have changed.

The notice itself is a prescribed form. It describes the proposed development, names the applicant, states where the application can be inspected, and tells the recipient they may make representations to the authority. Serve it by post or by hand, keep proof of service, and record the date for the certificate.

The practical sequence:

1. Obtain an official copy of the register and title plan for the application site and for any adjoining land inside the red line.
2. Identify the freeholder and any long leaseholders, and check whether highway land is included.
3. Consider whether the red line can be reduced so that third-party land falls outside it, which is sometimes the cleanest answer.
4. Serve the prescribed notice on each owner and diarise the date.
5. Complete Certificate B naming each owner and the date of service.

Step three is worth pausing on. Where a visibility splay can be achieved within the site, or a drainage connection rerouted, redrawing the red line removes the notice requirement altogether. Where it cannot, serve the notice and move on, because an application with a correct Certificate B is far better placed than one with a contested Certificate A.

Certificates C and D and when they apply

Certificate C applies where the applicant knows some but not all of the owners. Notice is served on those identified, and a notice is published in a local newspaper circulating in the area for the others. The certificate records both.

Certificate D applies where none of the owners can be identified. Notice is published in a local newspaper and nothing is served personally.

Both require reasonable steps to have been taken to identify owners, and an authority may ask what those steps were. Unregistered land, land in deceased estates and strips of former railway or canal land are the usual occasions for them. Do not reach for Certificate D because a search looked inconvenient; an officer who discovers the owner was on the register will treat the certificate as defective.

Agricultural tenants and the separate declaration

Section 65 also requires notice to any agricultural tenant of the land. The application form carries a separate agricultural land declaration alongside the ownership certificate, and it has to be completed whether or not the land is agricultural.

The notice to an agricultural tenant is a different prescribed form from the owner's notice. On a farm diversification scheme or a paddock sale, this is the item most often overlooked, and it invalidates the application as surely as a wrong ownership certificate.

Where the land was agricultural within the relevant period and the tenancy has ended, say so rather than leaving the declaration blank.

Consequences of a false certificate

Issuing a certificate knowing it to be false or misleading in a material particular is an offence under section 65 of the Act, punishable by a fine. That is the statutory position, and prosecutions are rare.

The practical consequences bite harder and sooner. An authority that discovers a defective certificate before determination will invalidate the application, which resets the clock. A permission granted on a defective certificate is vulnerable, although the courts have held that a defect does not automatically render the permission invalid and have exercised discretion in deciding what follows. That uncertainty is the problem: a purchaser's solicitor finding an unserved notice in the planning history will want an indemnity, and a neighbour who was never notified has a grievance that outlives the application.

So the right approach is not to take a view on the risk. Serve the notice.

Common errors that invalidate an application

The recurring ones, in rough order of frequency:

• Certificate A signed where the red line includes highway verge, footway or carriageway.
• Certificate A signed on jointly owned property by one owner alone.
• Notice not served on a long leaseholder, typically in a flat conversion or a shared freehold building.
• The agricultural land declaration left blank.
• The date of service omitted from Certificate B, or a date given that falls outside the relevant period.
• A Land Registry search older than the 21-day window, missing a recent transfer.
• Notice served on a managing agent rather than on the owner, without authority to accept service.
• The red line drawn around more land than the development needs, pulling third parties in unnecessarily.

Each of these is caught at validation if the authority is thorough, and each is the kind of item on a local validation checklist to check before submission, as set out in the guide to validation checklists and national and local requirements.

Where an application has already been submitted with the wrong certificate, the fix is usually to serve the notice and submit a corrected certificate, which the authority will accept, though it may reset the determination period. The routes out are covered in what to do when an application is made invalid after submission and in the practical guide to fixing and resubmitting an invalid application.

You can see the full set of documents a householder or self-build application needs alongside the form in the report index, or enter your postcode on PlanScope to get a document list for the 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.