Serving notice on a dissolved or insolvent company

If the registered proprietor of land in your application site is a company in administration, in liquidation or dissolved, you still have to serve notice and sign an ownership certificate. The route depends on which of those three it is. A company in administration still exists, so you serve it. A dissolved company does not exist, and its land has usually passed to the Crown as bona vacantia, so you serve the Crown's representative instead. Getting this wrong is not a technicality: section 65(6) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 makes it an offence to issue a certificate that is false or misleading, knowingly or recklessly.

The sequence below assumes you have already identified an owner you cannot simply write to. That is the common situation on infill sites, ransom strips, former industrial yards and the odd triangle of land behind a terrace.

Why ownership notice fails

Section 65 of the 1990 Act and the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 require an applicant to notify every owner of land in the application site and every agricultural tenant, and to certify what has been done. An owner, for this purpose, is a freeholder or a leaseholder with at least seven years of the term unexpired.

The authority cannot entertain an application without the certificate. In practice applications fail at validation for four reasons: the applicant assumes the registered proprietor is current when the register has moved on, the applicant serves a company at an address it left years ago, the applicant treats a dissolved company as simply untraceable, or the applicant signs Certificate A when part of the site, often a verge or an access strip, belongs to somebody else.

The certificates themselves are straightforward once ownership is known, and we set them out in ownership certificates A to D. The difficulty is always the establishing, not the signing.

Checking the register and the company

Two searches, in this order, and keep the outputs.

1. Obtain official copies of the register of title and the title plan from HM Land Registry for every parcel in the red line, including accesses, verges and anything you intend to alter.
2. Where the proprietor is a company, pull the Companies House record: current status, registered office, filing history, and any insolvency filings or appointment notices.
3. Where title is unregistered, search the index map, then look for a first registration trigger, then consider local knowledge, rate records and the authority's own land charges register.
4. Check whether the name on the register matches the company number on the register. Companies change names, and a register entry can name an earlier name of a company that still exists.

The company number is the thing to work from, not the name. A search by name will miss a company that has changed name, and it will throw up a different company that has taken the old name.

Companies in administration or liquidation

An administration or a liquidation does not remove the company's existence or its title. The land is still vested in the company, and the insolvency practitioner has powers over it.

Serve Notice 1 on the company at the registered office shown on the register at the date of service, and serve a second copy on the administrator or liquidator at the address in the appointment notice. There is no harm in serving both, and it answers any later argument about effective service. Where the practitioner has already marketed or sold the land, ask them in the covering letter to confirm whether a transfer has completed, because the register may lag a sale by weeks.

Keep the correspondence. An insolvency practitioner who writes back confirming the company's interest, or confirming a sale to a named buyer, has given you the best evidence of ownership you are going to get.

Dissolved companies and land vested in the Crown

When a company is dissolved, its property vests in the Crown as bona vacantia. In England and Wales, outside the Duchy areas, the Crown's interest is administered by the Government Legal Department's bona vacantia division. Land in the County Palatine of Lancaster goes to the Duchy of Lancaster and land in Cornwall to the Duchy of Cornwall, each with its own representative.

Two routes exist, and they suit different timetables.

The first is to serve notice on the Crown's representative as owner and proceed on Certificate B. That is usually the quicker course for a planning application, and it is the one most applicants take. Write to the relevant bona vacantia body, identify the title number and the dissolved company by number, and serve the notice in the prescribed form.

The second is to restore the company to the register, under the administrative restoration provisions of the Companies Act 2006 where the company was struck off and the application is made within six years, or by court order where it is not. On restoration the company is deemed to have continued in existence as if it had not been dissolved, which cures the title position. That matters where you need to buy the land rather than merely apply for permission over it, but it takes time and it needs the right applicant.

Where land has passed to the Crown, the Crown land procedures in the planning legislation may also be relevant to how the application is handled, and our note on Crown land applications and the urgent Crown route explains where those provisions bite.

The unknown owner publicity route

Where, after reasonable inquiry, you cannot establish the name and address of an owner, Certificate C or Certificate D applies and the notice is published in a newspaper circulating in the locality.

Reasonable inquiry is the operative phrase and it is tested by what you can show. A single Land Registry search is not reasonable inquiry on a parcel with no registered title. The steps an authority or a court would expect to see include the register searches above, a search of the index map for unregistered land, letters to the last known address with proof of posting, enquiries of neighbours and the parish council, a site notice, enquiries of any insolvency practitioner, and a check of the local land charges register.

The newspaper notice has to run for the prescribed period and the certificate records the publication date and the newspaper. Keep the original page, not a photocopy of a cutting, because the masthead and date are the proof.

An illustrative example

This example is illustrative. A 0.4 hectare former joinery yard has two title numbers. The larger parcel is registered to an active company that has changed its name twice. The smaller access strip is registered to a company dissolved eleven years ago. The applicant serves the active company at its current registered office using the company number from the register, and serves the bona vacantia division in respect of the strip, identifying the title number and the dissolved company's number. Certificate B is signed, naming both. The application validates first time. Had the applicant signed Certificate D on the basis that the dissolved company was untraceable, the certificate would have been wrong, because the owner could be established.

Recording the steps you took

Make a file note while the searches are fresh, and sign it.

The note should list each parcel, each title number, the search date, each addressee, the date and method of service, and the reasoning for the certificate chosen. Attach the official copies, the Companies House documents, the proofs of posting and the newspaper page. On a contentious site, a short statutory declaration by whoever carried out the inquiries is worth the solicitor's fee, because it converts a recollection into evidence.

The risk if you do not is twofold. A permission granted on a defective certificate is open to challenge, and the authority has a discretion to decline to determine or to revisit validation. Separately, a certificate that is false or misleading exposes the signatory to prosecution under section 65(6), which is a personal liability and not one the company carries for you.

Get the notice position settled before the drawings are finalised, because a newly discovered owner can change the red line. The policy case then goes into the Planning Statement, and the full list of report types shows what else the application will need. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Ownership and insolvency questions should be checked with a solicitor before you sign a certificate. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.