Part 12: what local authorities can build without permission

When a shelter, a substation-sized cabinet or a park building appears without any notice on the lamp posts, the usual explanation is local authority permitted development under Part 12 of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. Part 12 grants councils planning permission in advance for small ancillary buildings, works and equipment on land they own or maintain, and for a listed set of street furniture connected with the public services they run.

The right is narrower than it looks, and a surprising amount of council work sits outside the planning system entirely rather than inside Part 12. Knowing which applies is the difference between a useful complaint and a wasted one.

What Part 12 permits

Class A of Part 12 covers two things. The first is the erection, construction, maintenance, improvement or alteration of any small ancillary building, works or equipment on land belonging to or maintained by the authority, required for the purposes of a function it exercises on that land other than as a statutory undertaker. The second is a list of street furniture required in connection with the operation of a public service the authority administers.

Class B deals with the deposit of waste material or refuse by a local authority on land already used for that purpose, with limits on extending the area or raising the height.

Three qualifiers in Class A do most of the work. The building must be small. The land must belong to or be maintained by the authority. And the function must be one the authority exercises on that land, in its ordinary capacity rather than as a statutory undertaker, because undertakers have their own parts of the Order.

Small ancillary buildings and the size limits

Small is defined by dimension rather than by impression. The Order measures it in height and volume, with a small building taken as one not exceeding 4 metres in height or 200 cubic metres in capacity. Read the current text before relying on those figures, because the Order is amended frequently.

Two hundred cubic metres is larger than people expect. A single storey building roughly 10 metres by 7 metres at 3 metres high is close to the limit, so a park store, a changing facility, a pumping chamber housing or a grounds maintenance depot can all be built under the class. A pavilion with a function room cannot.

Ancillary is the other control. The building has to serve a function the authority already exercises on that land. A storage building in a park that serves the park is ancillary. The same building let to a commercial tenant is not, and nor is a building serving a function carried out somewhere else. That is also the reason a new office, a depot on a fresh site or a waste transfer station needs permission.

The household equivalent works on similar logic, and anyone who has looked at the curtilage rules that apply to a household outbuilding will recognise the pattern: a size limit, a purpose test and a land test, all of which have to be satisfied together.

Street furniture and the public service list

The second limb of Class A lists the items specifically: lamp standards, information kiosks, passenger shelters, public shelters and seats, telephone boxes, fire alarms, public drinking fountains, horse troughs, refuse bins and baskets, barriers for the control of people and vehicles, and similar structures or works required in connection with the operation of a public service administered by the authority.

The phrase doing the work is "similar structures or works". It covers the ordinary furniture of a street or park, and it does not stretch to things of a different character. A large advertising structure, a building, a mast or a commercial kiosk is not similar to a bench, however it is described in a report.

Surfacing is handled elsewhere. To resurface a path, build a new footway or form a hard standing is often either not development at all or covered by another provision, and the same questions about hard surfacing and permeable paving that arise in a front garden arise in a public space, with drainage the main planning issue in both.

Highway works that are not development at all

This is the part most often misunderstood. Section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines development, and it expressly excludes the carrying out, on land within the boundaries of a road by a highway authority, of works required for the maintenance or improvement of the road.

So a new pedestrian crossing, a build-out, a resurfacing scheme, a cycle lane within the carriageway, bollards, signs and a bus stop relocation generally need no planning permission and no permitted development right, because they are not development. There is nothing for a planning department to consider and no application to comment on.

That does not mean there is no process. Changing waiting restrictions, speed limits or one-way working requires a traffic regulation order, which carries statutory advertisement and consultation and can be objected to. Street works are coordinated under separate street works legislation with permit schemes. And where a scheme goes outside the highway boundary, onto a verge in different ownership or into a park, the planning question comes back.

Where the right stops

Part 12 is disapplied or limited in several situations:

• Development requiring environmental impact assessment is excluded from permitted development rights by the Order's general provisions
• Rights are restricted on designated land, and an article 4 direction can remove them
• Listed building consent, scheduled monument consent and consent for works to a tree protected by a Tree Preservation Order are all unaffected and still required
• Work for a statutory undertaker function falls under different parts of the Order
• Land the authority neither owns nor maintains is outside Class A entirely
• The size limits are absolute, so a scheme slightly over them needs permission for the whole building

Where permission is needed for the authority's own scheme on its own land, the Town and Country Planning General Regulations 1992 set out how the application is made and determined. It is publicised and consulted on like any other application, and committees usually take these decisions because of the obvious interest. The submitted pack is the same as anyone else's, and the documents that application has to carry are set by the national and local validation lists.

Consultation when there is no application

Permitted development carries no statutory consultation. There is no site notice, no neighbour letter and no 21 day period. That is the honest answer to the most common complaint about these schemes.

Other duties still apply. The public sector equality duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 applies to the authority's decision to carry out the works, and a scheme that removes seating or narrows a footway engages it. Where the authority has chosen to consult, or has an established practice of consulting, the consultation has to be fair, and the courts have set out what fairness requires: consult while proposals are still at a formative stage, give enough information for an intelligent response, allow adequate time, and conscientiously take the responses into account.

Members' involvement is the practical route. Ward councillors, a parish or town council, a scrutiny committee or a petition will often get further than planning correspondence, because the decision maker here is the service department rather than the planning department.

Questioning works already under way

Start by asking the authority, in writing, for the legal basis of the works: whether they are said not to be development, to fall within Part 12, or to be covered by permission already granted, with the reference. The answer narrows the argument immediately.

If the claim is Part 12, test it against the three limbs. Measure the structure. Check the land ownership. Ask what function it serves and whether that function is exercised on that land. If the works exceed the limits, they are a breach of planning control, and the planning authority has to consider whether enforcement is expedient, awkward though that is when the developer is the council.

Beyond that the routes are the Local Government Ombudsman for maladministration, and judicial review of the decision to carry out the works, which has to be brought promptly and is subject to a short time limit for planning matters. Take advice quickly, because the limits are measured in weeks.

A lawful development certificate is the only formal way to establish whether particular works are lawful without permission, and either side can apply. For anyone following the rules themselves, the Order changes often enough that an older note goes stale, so follow changes to the permitted development rules.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope if you want to see what a formal application for a comparable building would have to include.

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.