Personal and enurement conditions on a permission

A planning permission normally runs with the land rather than with the person who applied for it. Section 75(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 says a grant enures for the benefit of the land and of all persons for the time being interested in it, except in so far as the permission otherwise provides. A personal planning permission condition is that exception written down. It limits the benefit of the consent to a named individual, a named business or a defined class of occupier, so when they go, the consent goes with them.

On a farm or an equestrian holding this bites harder than it does on a housing estate. Diversification schemes are often granted because of who is running them, and the condition records that fact in a way a buyer cannot ignore.

What a personal condition actually does

Two restrictions get muddled here, and the difference decides what a purchaser inherits.

An enurement condition is the true personal permission. It says the consent is granted to a named person and that nobody else may rely on it. When that person dies, sells up or stops the use, nothing is authorised any more. The building or the use becomes unlawful unless a fresh permission is obtained.

An occupancy condition works differently. The permission itself is general and transfers with the land, but the dwelling may only be lived in by someone who meets a description, usually a person solely or mainly employed in agriculture in the locality together with their dependants. Anyone may buy the house. Only a qualifying person may occupy it.

Mixing the two in one condition is the commonest drafting fault. A condition that says a dwelling is personal to Mr A and may also be occupied by an agricultural worker leaves everyone guessing which limb governs on sale.

When national guidance supports one

The six tests for conditions apply here as everywhere. A condition must be necessary, relevant to planning, relevant to the development permitted, enforceable, precise and reasonable in all other respects. The Planning Practice Guidance chapter on the use of planning conditions adds a specific warning about personal permissions: they will rarely be appropriate, because planning control is concerned with the use of land and not with the identity of the user.

The guidance leaves room for exceptions. Two recur in rural casework. The first is personal hardship, where a use or a caravan would not normally be acceptable but is tolerated for as long as a particular person needs it. The second is where the acceptability of the proposal turns on the applicant, such as a therapy or livery operation whose traffic, hours and intensity depend on how one operator runs it.

An officer who reaches for a personal condition to get round a policy objection is usually solving the wrong problem. If the use is unacceptable in principle, naming a person does not cure it. And if it is acceptable in principle, the restriction fails the necessity test.

Naming an occupier, a business or a class

Naming a living person is straightforward. Naming a business is where conditions come unstuck.

If the condition names a limited company, a routine group reorganisation, a share sale or a change of corporate name can leave the permission attached to an entity that no longer trades. Officers sometimes try to fix this with a reference to successors, which then widens the class so far that the condition stops being personal at all.

Better practice is to describe the function rather than the legal vehicle. A condition tied to the use being carried on in connection with the agricultural holding at Red House Farm survives a company restructure. One tied to Red House Farm Equestrian Limited may not.

Where a class is described, it has to be capable of being tested on the ground. "Persons employed locally in agriculture or forestry" can be checked against payroll and accounts. "Persons with a genuine connection to the village" cannot, and an inspector is likely to find it imprecise and unenforceable.

An illustrative example

This example is illustrative. A livestock farmer in a National Landscape wins permission for a single static caravan to house a relative who helps with lambing and has care needs. The officer attaches a condition making the permission personal to the named relative and requiring removal of the caravan within three months of the occupation ending. Five years later the relative moves into residential care. The farmer wants to let the caravan to a seasonal worker. The condition does not allow it, and the caravan has to come out or a new application has to be made on agricultural need grounds, with evidence of a functional requirement and the usual financial test.

What it does to sale, lending and value

A personal condition reduces what the land is worth, and sometimes it reduces what a lender will advance against it.

Valuers treat the consent as having no marriage value with the land, because a purchaser cannot use it. Where the condition attaches to a dwelling rather than a use, the practical effect is worse: the house exists lawfully, but after the named person goes there may be no authorised residential use to sell. Buyers' solicitors raise enquiries about this at an early stage, and lenders have their own criteria about restricted-title residential security.

Occupancy conditions are a known quantity by comparison. Rural lenders deal with agricultural ties routinely, usually by discounting value, and there is an established route to removal. A bare personal condition has no such market.

Anyone assembling evidence for a sale or a refinance should pull the decision notice, the officer report and the conditions as they were imposed, not as they were later described. Our note on approval of details and discharge of conditions sets out how to track what has actually been agreed on a permission.

Temporary permission as the alternative

Section 72(1)(b) of the 1990 Act lets an authority grant permission for a limited period. That is often the better instrument.

A temporary permission gives the authority the control it wants without creating a condition tied to a person. It ends on a fixed date, it is enforceable by reference to a calendar rather than to someone's employment status, and it does not depress value in the same open-ended way. The Planning Practice Guidance treats temporary permissions as suitable where a trial run is needed or where circumstances are expected to change, while cautioning against a second temporary permission simply to prolong an unacceptable use.

For a farm diversification scheme with uncertain demand, a five-year temporary permission with a restoration condition usually serves both sides better than a condition naming the current proprietor. Worth raising at pre-application rather than after the decision has issued.

Getting the condition removed later

The route is an application under section 73 of the 1990 Act to vary or remove the condition. The authority considers only the condition in question, not the principle of the development, and a grant produces a new permission sitting alongside the original.

What persuades an authority depends on which condition is in play. For an agricultural occupancy condition, the standard evidence is a marketing exercise at a price reflecting the tie, run for a reasonable period, showing no qualifying purchaser came forward, supported by evidence about local agricultural need. For a personal condition imposed on hardship grounds, the argument is usually that the circumstances have changed or that the use has proved harmless in practice. Refusal carries a right of appeal to the Planning Inspectorate.

There is a second route where the condition has simply been breached for long enough. A breach of condition becomes immune from enforcement after ten years of continuous breach under section 171B of the 1990 Act, and a certificate of lawful existing use or development under section 191 is the formal way to confirm that position. Relying on immunity without a certificate leaves the problem for the next conveyance. Related points about what can and cannot be left to a later stage are covered in our piece on reserved matters and what cannot be reserved.

Wording that does not fall apart

Good drafting answers four questions on the face of the condition. Who holds the benefit, when does it end, what must happen then, and how is compliance demonstrated.

1. Identify the person or function precisely, with the holding or address, not a bare company name.
2. State the triggering event in words that can be dated, such as the cessation of occupation or of the use.
3. Set a period for removal or restoration, and say what must be removed and to what state the land returns.
4. Require written notification to the authority within a stated period of the trigger, so the condition is monitorable.
5. Avoid cross-references to documents that are not themselves conditioned, because an unconditioned plan is not enforceable.

A condition that passes those four questions is also easier to argue away later, because the evidence needed is obvious. A vague one invites an enforcement dispute in which both sides argue about what the officer meant in 2007.

When you are putting the supporting case together, the narrative belongs in the Planning Statement rather than in a covering email, and the full set of report types shows what else a rural application of this kind usually needs. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site is likely to need before you draft the section 73 case.

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.