A pre-start condition tracker for a small site

A pre-start condition tracker is a single table that lists every condition on your decision notice which has to be discharged before development begins, with the evidence each one needs, who is producing it and the date it must be submitted. Build it the week the permission arrives, not the week before the groundworkers are booked. On a small site the risk is not that you forget a condition, it is that you start work while a pre-commencement condition is still outstanding, which can leave the permission unimplemented and the development unlawful.

That is the part self-builders tend to discover late. A breach of condition notice is one problem. A permission that was never lawfully begun, and then expires, is a much larger one.

Reading the decision notice before anything else

Decision notices are not written to be project-managed. Conditions arrive in the order the officer drafted them, mixing trivial and serious, so the first job is to sort them.

Work through the notice line by line and put each condition into one of four groups. Pre-commencement conditions use wording such as "prior to the commencement of development", "before any works begin" or "no development shall take place until". Pre-occupation conditions say "prior to first occupation" or "before the dwelling is occupied". Compliance conditions require something to be done throughout, for example hours of working or a restriction on external lighting. Informative notes are not conditions at all and need no action, though they often sit in the same list and look identical.

Then record the three-year time limit condition separately. It sets the date by which development must be begun, and every pre-commencement discharge has to clear before that date, not on it.

Which conditions bite before a spade goes in

On a one to nine unit scheme the pre-commencement list is usually short and predictable. Materials samples, a construction method statement, surface water drainage details, tree protection, a contaminated land verification approach, levels, and since the Environment Act 2021 came into force the biodiversity gain plan, which must be approved before development may begin on most permissions granted after 12 February 2024 for majors and 2 April 2024 for small sites.

Two of those deserve particular attention. Tree protection conditions normally require the fencing to be erected and inspected before any machinery arrives, so the tree survey and the arboricultural method statement have to be approved and then physically implemented. Drainage conditions often require approval of a scheme that has not yet been designed in construction detail, and the lead local flood authority is a consultee on the discharge, which adds weeks.

A condition that requires only submission, rather than approval, is weaker. Read the verb. "Shall be submitted to and approved in writing by the local planning authority" means you wait for the approval.

What the tracker needs in each column

Keep it to seven columns. Anything longer stops being maintained by week three.

The requirement column is where most trackers fail. Copying the condition text verbatim is useless because conditions are long and conditional. Write what you actually have to produce. "Condition 5: send three brick samples and a mortar panel photograph" is a task. "Condition 5: materials shall be submitted and approved" is not.

Add the council reference number for each discharge application as it is issued, because approvals arrive as separate decision notices and get lost.

Lead times the evidence actually needs

A discharge of conditions application has a statutory determination period of eight weeks, and councils routinely use most of it. That is the figure to plan around, and it is only the council's clock. The evidence has its own lead time in front of it.

Ecology is the long pole. Bat emergence surveys run from May to September, with the optimal window May to August, and great crested newt eDNA sampling is limited to 15 April to 30 June. If a condition requires a survey you have not done, the earliest possible start date may be nine months away rather than nine weeks. Soil sampling for a contamination verification plan needs a dry window and a laboratory turnaround. A structural engineer's foundation design near retained trees needs the arboricultural report first, so those two run in series.

Build the tracker backwards from the date you want to begin. Subtract eight weeks for determination, then the drafting time, then the survey window. The date you get is when work on that condition has to start.

Submitting discharges together or one at a time

Councils charge a fee per discharge application, not per condition, so bundling several conditions into one submission is cheaper. It is also slower, because the application is determined as a whole and one weak submission holds up the rest.

The practical split on a small site is two applications. Put everything that is ready and uncontroversial into the first, early. Hold anything that needs a consultee response, typically drainage, highways or ecology, in a second application so a drainage query does not delay your materials approval. Where a condition will clearly take longer than the others, submit it on its own.

One honest uncertainty here: whether a council treats a partial discharge as acceptable varies, and some will not formally discharge a condition in part. Ask the case officer before you submit rather than after.

What counts as a material start, and what goes wrong

Section 56 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 sets out what counts as beginning development. Digging a trench for a foundation, laying out a road, or a material change of use will all do it. Site clearance and fencing usually will not.

The trap is the combination. Carrying out a material operation while a pre-commencement condition remains undischarged is a breach, and the courts have held that in some circumstances it means the permission has not been lawfully implemented at all. If the three-year limit then passes, the permission is gone and you reapply under whatever policy applies on that day. Section 73B and the condition variation route under section 73 exist, but they are repairs, not plans.

Illustrative example: a plot with a single new dwelling has permission granted on 3 March, with a pre-commencement drainage condition. The owner clears the site in June, which is fine, then digs footings in July while the drainage scheme is still with the lead local flood authority. The footings are the material operation. The condition was live. Everything after that is negotiation.

So the rule on a small site is simple. No excavation, no road, no foundation until the tracker shows every pre-commencement row marked approved.

Keeping the file for sale or refinance

Every approval notice, submitted drawing and email confirming compliance goes in one folder named by condition number. Buyers' solicitors ask for exactly this, and a missing discharge on a four-year-old dwelling turns into an indemnity policy or a retention.

Keep the compliance evidence for the conditions that continue to bite too, such as a landscape maintenance schedule or an electric vehicle charging point specification. Those are the ones nobody photographs.

If you are assembling the application pack in the first place, the Planning Statement and supporting documents you submit shape the conditions you get, and a scheme that explains its drainage and tree strategy properly often attracts fewer pre-commencement conditions. A construction management plan checklist for a tight site covers much of what a method statement condition will ask for, and an internal quality check before anything leaves the office catches the gaps that generate conditions in the first place.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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