Permission time limits and what happens when one lapses

Planning permission expiry three years after grant is the default, and the consequence of missing it is harsher than most owners expect. There is no renewal. No extension application, no grace period, no reinstatement on payment of a fee. A permission that expires unimplemented is gone, and the only route forward is a fresh application assessed against the development plan and national policy as they stand on that later date. For an investor holding a site on the strength of a consent, that is the single most important date in the file.

Section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 sets the default at three years from the grant. Section 92 does the equivalent job for outline permission on a different timetable.

The standard limit and its variations

Read the time limit condition rather than assuming. Authorities can and do impose shorter or longer periods, and a longer period is far easier to obtain before the decision issues than afterwards.

Variations you will encounter:

• A full permission with the standard three year condition running from the date of the decision notice.
• A shorter period, sometimes used where a scheme relies on a temporary circumstance or where policy is about to change.
• A longer period on a large or phased site, granted because the applicant asked for it with a programme to justify it.
• A temporary permission, which is a different thing entirely: the use must cease and the land be restored by the stated date.
• A section 73 permission, which is a new permission in its own right and generally carries forward the original time limit rather than restarting it.

That last point catches people out. Varying a condition in year three does not buy another three years, because section 73 cannot be used to extend the period within which development must be begun.

Reserved matters and the separate deadline

Outline permission runs on two clocks. Under section 92 the default is that an application for approval of reserved matters must be made within three years of the outline grant, and the development must begin within two years of the final approval of the last reserved matter.

Two practical points. Submitting one reserved matters application within the three year period protects the position for what that application covers, and on a phased site the treatment of later phases depends entirely on how the conditions were drafted. Get that confirmed in writing before the decision issues rather than discovering the answer in year four.

And the second clock does not start until the final approval, so a long reserved matters determination extends the overall window rather than eating into it.

Whether a lapsed permission can be revived

It cannot. A temporary statutory power allowed time limits on certain existing permissions to be extended during a period after 2009, and that power no longer applies.

What follows from expiry is a fresh application. The practical effect depends on what has changed in the meantime:

The ecology point is the one that most often changes the economics. A permission granted before mandatory biodiversity net gain took effect, then allowed to lapse, comes back needing a metric assessment, a 10 per cent uplift and a gain plan approved before commencement.

Make the previous permission work for you in the new submission. A Planning Statement that sets out the planning history, quotes the earlier officer report and identifies exactly what has and has not changed in policy terms gives the case officer a short route to a recommendation. Where obligations were secured first time round, check whether they can be carried across, because varying a section 106 agreement after permission is sometimes simpler than negotiating a new one.

It is also worth checking the fee exemptions worth claiming before you pay, since fees are indexed annually and some categories attract a reduction.

Keeping a permission alive by implementation

Implementation means a material operation under section 56 carried out before the time limit expires. The listed operations include digging a trench for foundations, laying underground mains or pipes in such a trench, constructing a road or part of one, and for a change of use, the change itself.

The operation has to be real and related to the permitted development. A single trial pit, a strip of topsoil removed from an unrelated part of the site, or a fence erected for security are not reliable starts. Where the intention is to implement so as to preserve the permission, do something identifiable on the approved drawings and record it.

The condition trap is more dangerous than the operation itself. Works carried out in breach of a condition that had to be satisfied before commencement are generally not a lawful implementation, an approach drawn from Whitley and Sons v Secretary of State for Wales. So a developer who digs foundations in month 35 without having discharged the contaminated land condition, the surface water condition and the materials condition may have done nothing at all in law, and the permission still expires.

A workable sequence for a late start:

1. List every condition and identify which are pre-commencement.
2. Submit discharge applications early. Allow eight weeks each, and chase them.
3. Get the discharge decisions in writing before anything happens on site.
4. Serve any notices the conditions or an obligation require, including a commencement notice where the levy applies.
5. Carry out a material operation that is clearly part of the approved scheme.
6. Record it: dated photographs, a site diary entry, the contractor's instruction and an invoice.

That record is what you will produce in five years if the lawfulness of the start is questioned.

Reapplying against varying an existing permission

Where a live permission needs to change, section 73 varies a condition and section 96A deals with non-material amendments, and both leave the original consent in place. Neither resets a time limit.

Where the permission has lapsed, neither is available, because there is no permission to vary. The only route is a fresh application.

Where a live permission is to be built in a different form, the question of overlapping consents becomes live. The approach in Hillside Parks v Snowdonia National Park Authority is indicative of the difficulty: later permissions that are physically incompatible with an earlier multi-unit scheme can make the earlier scheme incapable of lawful completion. The practical answer on a large site is usually a single section 73 permission covering the whole revised scheme rather than a series of separate consents layered over the original.

Checking the operative date

One last administrative point, and it goes wrong more often than it should.

The time limit runs from the date of the grant, which is the date on the decision notice, not the date of the committee resolution and not the date you received the notice. Where a section 106 agreement was completed before the decision issued, the gap between resolution and grant can be months, and that gap is time you still have.

So pull the decision notice, find the time limit condition, read the stated period, work from the notice date, and put the expiry in a diary with a reminder twelve months out. On a site held for investment, the reminder is worth more than the advice.

Before reapplying, scope the documents a fresh application needs against current requirements rather than reusing the pack from the original submission.

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.