Ownership certificates are the part you cannot delegate

Everything else in a planning application can be drafted, reviewed and improved. The ownership certificate cannot, because it is a statement of fact about who owns the land and who has been told about the application, and getting it wrong is a criminal offence rather than a validation query. An ownership certificate planning application error is also one of the few mistakes that can follow you after permission is granted.

So this is the part of the submission where an agent's professional exposure is at its sharpest. You sign it, or your client does, on the strength of information neither of you controls.

What each certificate asserts

Section 65 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, with the detail in the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, requires an application to be accompanied by a certificate about ownership of the application site. "Owner" for this purpose means the freeholder or a leaseholder with at least seven years of the term unexpired.

Four certificates exist, and only one is correct for any given application:

1. Certificate A: the applicant owned the whole of the application site 21 days before the application, and no other person was an owner. Nothing else is required.
2. Certificate B: the applicant does not own all of it, but knows who the other owners are and has served notice on all of them.
3. Certificate C: the applicant does not know who owns part of the site, has served notice on any owners it could identify, and has taken reasonable steps to find the rest.
4. Certificate D: the applicant does not know who owns any of the site and has taken reasonable steps to find out.

Certificates C and D require a notice published in a local newspaper as well. They are not shortcuts for not having checked. The reasonable steps have to be real and should be listed.

The most common error is signing Certificate A because the applicant owns the house, while the application red line clips a verge, a shared driveway, a strip of unregistered land or a neighbour's wall. The red line, not the title plan, decides which certificate applies.

When notice has to be served and on whom

Notice goes to every person who was an owner of any part of the application site at any time in the 21 days before the application is submitted. The form of notice is prescribed in the Order, and it must be given to each owner, not posted to a general address and hoped for.

Twenty-one days is the operative period. An application lodged the day after the notices go out carries a certificate that is not yet true, and a certificate that is untrue when signed is the problem, not the certificate that becomes true later.

Keep proof. Signed-for post, a dated copy of each notice, the name and address used, and a note of how the owner was identified. That file is what you produce if the certificate is later challenged, and three years after permission nobody remembers who was told.

Where the site includes land in multiple ownerships, build the notice list from a title search rather than the client's recollection. Land Registry title plans, the red line and a site walk together catch most of the problems. Unregistered land is the residual risk, and it is the reason Certificate C exists.

The agricultural holdings question

There is a second certificate that catches people out. The application must also state whether any part of the land is, or was within the previous 21 days, an agricultural holding, and where it is, notice must be served on every agricultural tenant.

This matters well beyond farmland. A paddock let on a grazing licence, a field let under a farm business tenancy, allotment-style lettings and land with a historic tenancy that nobody has documented all potentially engage it. On a greenfield site with an option agreement, the farming tenant is often the person most affected by the application and the person least likely to have been told.

Ask the question directly and in writing: is any part of this land let to anyone for agricultural use, now or in the last three weeks. A verbal assurance from a landowner who has forgotten the arrangement with a neighbouring farmer is not a basis for a signed certificate.

Why a draft cannot answer any of this

AI-assisted drafting is useful for the documents that argue a case. It is structurally incapable of completing a certificate, because the inputs are facts about title, tenancy and service of notice that exist only in a land registry file, a solicitor's file and a postal receipt.

PlanScope's drafts insert a flag rather than inventing site-specific facts, which is the correct behaviour here: a document that confidently filled in an ownership position would be worse than one that leaves the question open. The same applies to the declaration about site visits, the agricultural holdings answer and anything else resting on the applicant's personal knowledge. Our note on where site judgement cannot be drafted in a design statement covers the wider category.

Be explicit with clients about where the line falls. The statements and assessments can be drafted and then reviewed; the certificates are theirs, and no amount of review transfers that responsibility. Explaining that distinction early avoids an uncomfortable conversation later, and our note on explaining an AI-assisted draft to a client or a committee sets out the language that works.

The criminal liability attached to a false certificate

Section 65 of the 1990 Act makes it an offence to issue a certificate that contains a statement which the person knows to be false or misleading in a material particular, or to recklessly issue one that is false or misleading in a material particular. Conviction carries a fine.

Read "recklessly" carefully, because that is the limb that applies to agents. An agent who signs Certificate A on the basis of a client's word, without asking for the title plan, is exposed in a way that an agent who asked, recorded the answer and checked the red line against the title is not.

Evidence to keep on file

Build a standing file for every application containing the official copy of the register and title plan, the red line drawing overlaid on the title plan, the notice list with the basis for each entry, copies of the served notices with dates, postal proof, the newspaper notice and its publication date where used, and the client's written answer on agricultural tenancies.

That file takes an hour. It is also the difference between a quick answer and a professional indemnity notification if a neighbour alleges non-service two years later.

Validation problems are a separate category and much easier to fix. Our note on why planning applications are returned as invalid covers those, and the contrast is instructive: a missing drawing is an administrative problem, while a false certificate is not.

An illustrative example

Take an illustrative case: an application for 14 houses on a 0.8 hectare paddock. The client owns the freehold and signs Certificate A. During the consultation period a neighbouring farmer objects, stating that he has grazed the paddock under an annual arrangement for nine years. The agent had not asked about agricultural tenancies. The application is withdrawn, notice is served, and it is resubmitted with the correct certificate six weeks later. The delay costs a determination period and the client's confidence. This example is illustrative.

What happens when the certificate is wrong

If the error is discovered before determination, the usual course is to serve the notices properly and submit a corrected certificate, with the authority restarting the publicity period. Some authorities will treat the application as invalid from the start.

If it is discovered after permission is granted, the position is more serious. A permission granted on a false certificate is vulnerable to challenge by judicial review, and a person who should have been notified and was not has an obvious ground. The practical remedy is often a fresh application with correct certificates, which means losing the benefit of the original consent.

So check the red line against the title plan on every application, ask the agricultural question in writing, and diary the 21 days. Those three habits remove almost all of the risk.

Where a draft needs professional sign-off before submission, the professional directory is the route for finding a reviewer.

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