Planning contravention notices and how to answer one

A planning contravention notice is served under section 171C of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 when a council thinks there may have been a breach of planning control and wants information before deciding what to do. You have 21 days from service to respond, and failing to respond is a criminal offence in itself, separate from whatever the underlying breach may be.

Most landlords who receive one have converted something, let something or altered something without realising an application was needed. The notice is the council asking what happened, and the answer shapes everything that follows.

What the notice requires you to provide

The council can serve the notice on anyone who is the owner or occupier of the land, who has any other interest in it, or who is carrying out operations on it. That includes a leaseholder, a managing agent and sometimes a contractor.

The information it can require falls into two groups. First, information about operations being carried out on the land, about any use of it, and about any activities taking place there, including when they began and by whom they were carried out. Second, information about your interest in the land and the name and address of anyone else you know to have an interest.

It can also ask what the land was used for previously, when a particular use started, whether a planning permission is claimed and on what basis, and what conditions or limitations are said to apply.

The 21 days and the offence

The period runs from service, not from the date you opened the envelope, and 21 days is short once you have found the original permission, checked the lease and located dates. Start immediately.

Failure to comply within that period is a criminal offence, prosecuted in the magistrates' court and carrying a fine at level 3 on the standard scale. Continuing to ignore the notice after that does not make the problem go away, because the council can prosecute again and can proceed on the information it does have.

Where you cannot get all the information in time, reply within the period with what you have, explain what is missing and why, and say when you expect to supply it. A partial but timely reply with a reason is treated very differently from silence.

Answering accurately without volunteering more

Answer the question asked. That is the whole discipline, and it is harder than it sounds when the temptation is to explain the background.

Three habits help. Read each question and identify exactly what fact is being requested. Answer in a sentence with the fact, not a narrative. And where you do not know, say that you do not know rather than estimating, because an estimated date that turns out to be wrong is worse than an honest gap.

Dates deserve special care. The date a use began is the fact on which immunity may later turn, and an answer given casually in week one can decide an enforcement outcome two years later. If you have documentary evidence, tenancy agreements, council tax records, utility accounts, invoices, check the date against it before writing it down.

Do not attach documents that were not requested. A notice asking when a use began is not asking for the full tenancy file, and volunteering it hands the council evidence it would otherwise have to obtain.

Service itself is worth checking. The notice must be in writing, must state that it is served under section 171C, must specify the land and must state the period for response. A notice that omits one of those is defective, though the safest course is still to answer it and raise the defect separately rather than treating it as void.

Whether to take advice first

For anything beyond a simple factual query, yes. A planning consultant or a solicitor with enforcement experience can usually turn a response around inside the 21 days, and the cost is small against the risk.

Advice is particularly worth taking where the answer might establish or destroy an immunity claim, where several parties have received notices and their answers need to be consistent with each other, where the works were carried out by a previous owner and your knowledge is second hand, or where the council's questions suggest it has already formed a view about a breach.

There is no right of appeal against a planning contravention notice. You cannot challenge its service through the Planning Inspectorate. Judicial review is available in principle where a notice is plainly outside the power, and it is rarely proportionate.

The offence of providing false information

Knowingly or recklessly giving information that is false or misleading in a material particular is a separate and more serious offence than simply failing to reply. It can be tried in the Crown Court, and it is the offence that turns an administrative problem into a personal one.

The word recklessly matters. Guessing at a date you have not checked, or repeating what a previous owner told you as though you knew it yourself, can be reckless even without any intention to mislead. Say what you know, say how you know it, and say where you are relying on someone else's account.

How the answers are used

Everything you supply can be used in subsequent enforcement proceedings, and the reply commonly appears as an exhibit in an appeal bundle. It also feeds the council's decision on what to do next.

Four outcomes are usual. The council decides there is no breach and closes the file. It invites a retrospective application, which is the most common outcome where the development is acceptable in principle. It serves an enforcement notice, a breach of condition notice or, in urgent cases, a stop notice. Or it decides the breach is immune from action and takes no further step.

Where a retrospective application is invited, taking it up is normally the sensible course, and it gives you the chance to regularise the position with conditions you have seen. Occasionally a parallel application is worth considering, and the reasoning behind that is set out in twin-tracking and when a duplicate application helps.

What usually happens afterwards

Most planning contravention notices do not end in prosecution. They end in a retrospective application, a small change on site, or a file note recording that the use is lawful.

The ones that go badly are the ones where the reply was late, evasive or inconsistent with documents the council later obtained. An officer who believes they were misled is far less inclined to negotiate, and the reply is in writing and permanent.

Once the position is regularised, keep the record. The conditions, the discharge correspondence and the certificates all belong in one place, which is the discipline described in building a compliance file after permission is granted. Where a retrospective application follows, a Planning Statement setting out the planning history and the policy case is what the officer needs before recommending approval.

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.