Ownership certificates A to D and who must be told

Every planning application has to carry an ownership certificate, and getting it wrong is one of the few mistakes that can undo a permission after it is granted. The requirement comes from section 65 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and the Development Management Procedure Order 2015: before you apply, anyone who owns part of the application site has to be told, and you have to certify on the form that you have done it.

For a self-builder the usual trap is not a hidden owner. It is the strip of highway verge you need to cross to form the access, which belongs to the county council.

Why the certificate exists

Planning permission can be granted over land the applicant does not own. Nothing in the system prevents it, and nothing in a permission gives the applicant a right to enter the land.

The certificate is the safeguard. It ensures that people with a legal interest in the land find out that an application affecting it has been made, so they can make representations. Without it, an owner could discover a permission over their land only when the diggers arrive.

That is why the consequences of an inaccurate certificate are procedural rather than merely administrative. The application is not valid without a signed certificate, and a permission granted on a false one is vulnerable.

Choosing between certificates A, B, C and D

Four certificates, and only one applies. An owner for this purpose means the freeholder, or a lessee with at least seven years of the term still to run. A mortgage lender is not an owner. A tenant with a three year lease is not an owner.

Certificate A is signed far more often than it is true. Draw the red line first, then check the title. The land inside the red line has to include everything the development needs: the access, any visibility splay over third party land, a drainage run, a service connection trench and any land required for construction.

Serving notice on a known owner

Where certificate B applies, serve the prescribed notice on each owner and each agricultural tenant. The notice has to be given not less than 21 days before the date of the application, which means the submission date is fixed by when you serve rather than when you are ready.

Practical points that save trouble:

1. Identify owners from a Land Registry title search for each parcel, not from what a neighbour tells you.
2. Where a parcel is unregistered, ask the adjoining owners and check the deeds of your own title for references.
3. Serve on the highway authority where any part of the red line falls on the public highway, including a verge crossing for a dropped kerb. This is the single most common omission on householder and self-build applications.
4. For a block of flats, the freeholder and any long leaseholder with seven years or more unexpired are owners. All of them need notice.
5. Keep a copy of each notice, the address served and proof of posting, and date the certificate correctly.

Where owners are unknown

Certificate C and certificate D exist for genuine cases of unknown ownership, which arise more often than you would expect on former railway land, back land strips, unadopted lanes and ransom strips retained by a builder who dissolved decades ago.

Both require publication of a notice in a newspaper circulating in the locality, and the publication must fall within the 21 day window before the application. You also have to be able to show you took reasonable steps to identify the owners: the title searches you ran, the enquiries you made, and the results.

Do not use certificate D as a shortcut. An authority that suspects the applicant knows perfectly well who owns the strip will ask, and so will the owner when they see the notice.

The agricultural holdings declaration

The certificate includes a declaration about agricultural tenants. Where any part of the application site is occupied under an agricultural tenancy, that tenant has to be served with notice in the same way as an owner, and the declaration on the form records it.

This catches self-builders buying a plot from a farm. A field let on a grazing licence or a farm business tenancy has an occupier whose interest is protected by the notice requirement, and the seller does not always mention it.

Timing of the notice against the application date

The 21 day period runs backwards from the date of the application, so the sequence is: finalise the red line, identify owners, serve notice, wait 21 days, submit. Certificates signed and dated on the day of submission but referring to notices served the previous week are invalid, and validation officers check the dates.

Where the red line changes during determination, for example because the highway authority asks for a larger visibility splay, the certificate has to be revisited. New land means new owners and a new notice, and a further consultation period. That is usually cheaper than the alternative, and re-consultation after a change of plan is a normal part of the process, as set out in re-consultation after amended plans.

Consequences of a false certificate

Section 65 makes it an offence to issue a certificate knowingly or recklessly containing a statement that is false or misleading in a material particular, and the offence carries a fine.

Beyond the offence, three practical consequences follow.

The authority can decline to proceed with an invalid application, and the clock restarts when a correct certificate arrives. A permission granted on a false certificate can be challenged by the affected owner, and while it is not automatically void, the risk sits with whoever relies on the permission. And on a sale or a funding drawdown, a solicitor reviewing the planning history will find the discrepancy between the certificate and the title, which is a poor time to discover it. The certificate and the notices form part of the public record kept under the statutory register requirements, as set out in the statutory planning register.

If you realise after submission that the wrong certificate was signed, tell the case officer immediately, serve the notices that should have been served, and submit a corrected certificate. Authorities deal with honest corrections routinely. They deal with discovered omissions much less kindly.

Where a site straddles a boundary between two authorities, the certificate and notice obligations apply to the whole of the application site in each application, which adds a layer of care set out in cross boundary sites.

Illustrative example

A self-builder buys a 0.1 hectare plot from a farmer, with access proposed over five metres of grass verge and a visibility splay clipping the neighbouring garden. Certificate A looks right because the plot is owned outright. It is not: the verge belongs to the highway authority and the splay crosses the neighbour's title, so certificate B applies and both parties must be served 21 days before submission. The arrangement here is illustrative and every plot needs its own title check.

Draft the Planning Statement and the rest of the pack once the red line is settled, not before. A change to the site boundary ripples through every drawing and every certificate.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it, and take legal advice where ownership is uncertain. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.