Stopping up and diversion order costs on a development

A stopping up or diversion order is a separate consent with its own procedure, its own timetable and its own bill, and it is not covered by the planning fee. If your scheme puts a building over an adopted highway, closes a service road or crosses a public footpath, budget for the order as a workstream rather than as a line item. The cost that hurts is rarely the application itself. It is the objection that pushes the order to an inquiry and adds six months to the programme while the contractor waits.

When a scheme needs a highway or path order

Planning permission authorises development. It does not extinguish anyone's right to walk, ride or drive over the land. Those rights survive the permission and have to be removed separately before the ground is broken.

Two statutes do most of the work. Sections 247 and 248 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 deal with highways, meaning adopted carriageways, verges and footways maintainable at public expense. Section 257 deals with footpaths, bridleways and restricted byways where stopping up or diversion is necessary to enable development authorised by a planning permission.

The test in both is necessity linked to the permission. An order cannot be used to tidy up a route the developer finds inconvenient, and an authority that makes one on that basis is vulnerable. Check the definitive map and the council's list of streets early, because a path can be recorded on the definitive map without being visible on the ground, and an unrecorded route can still be a highway by long use.

Section 247 orders and who applies

An order under section 247 is made by the Secretary of State for Transport, and applications in England go to the transport casework team rather than to the council. The developer applies, supplies the plan showing the extent of the stopping up and any replacement highway, and meets the advertising costs.

Section 253 is the provision worth knowing. It allows the draft order to be published before planning permission is granted, so the highway process and the planning process run side by side instead of end to end. On a scheme where the order sits on the critical path, using section 253 is the single change that saves the most time.

The order will not deal with everything. Statutory undertakers' apparatus stays where it is unless diverted under the relevant utility legislation, and private rights of access survive a public highway order. Those two points account for a lot of late surprises, so treat the diversion of a water main or a high-voltage cable as a separate cost alongside the other utility connection costs in the development budget.

Section 257 orders made by the council

For public rights of way, the competent authority is normally the local planning authority itself. It makes the order, advertises it, and serves notice on the prescribed bodies and on every owner and occupier of land crossed by the path.

The procedure sits in Schedule 14 to the 1990 Act. Where no objection is made and not withdrawn, the authority can confirm the order itself as an unopposed order. Where an objection stands, the order must be submitted to the Secretary of State, and the Planning Inspectorate decides it by written representations, hearing or inquiry.

That single fork governs the whole budget.

The costs you can actually predict

Councils that handle section 257 orders usually publish a charge for doing so, and many require a legal agreement under which the applicant meets the authority's costs including the cost of any inquiry. Ask for that fee schedule at pre-application stage and get it in writing, because the published figure is often for an unopposed order only.

Beyond the council charge, the predictable items are the newspaper notice, site notices at each end of the affected route, notices served on statutory bodies and landowners, and drawings prepared to the standard the authority requires. Where the order creates a replacement route, add the construction cost of that route, its surfacing, drainage, signage and any structures, plus the cost of maintaining it during the works.

Where an objection is expected, add legal advice and a witness. Objections from a rambling body or a parish council are not rare on rural diversions, and an objector who attends an inquiry costs you time even where the order is confirmed.

Do not forget the ordinary planning evidence that the highway change generates. A diversion that alters access arrangements normally needs a Transport Statement or fuller assessment with the application, and construction phase closures usually need a Construction Traffic Management Plan secured by condition.

Programme risk and how to price it

Treat the order as having two possible durations rather than one. Price the unopposed case as the base and hold a contingency for the opposed case, in both money and float.

1. Search the definitive map and the list of streets before you buy the site, and record every route affected.
2. Decide at concept stage whether the layout can avoid the route altogether, because designing around a footpath almost always costs less than moving it.
3. Consult the rights of way officer and the local access forum informally before any order is drafted.
4. Where diversion is unavoidable, offer a replacement route that is at least as convenient, and say why in the statement of reasons.
5. Apply under section 253 where a highway order is needed, so the draft order is advertised alongside the application.
6. Build the confirmation date, not the order date, into the construction programme.

The instinct to leave rights of way until after permission is understandable and it is wrong. By then the layout is fixed, the objection has somewhere to bite, and the only lever left is money.

Grampian conditions and the order

Authorities frequently deal with this by condition rather than by refusal. A negatively worded condition preventing the start of works, or occupation, until the order has been confirmed and the replacement route constructed is standard, and it satisfies the tests in the Planning Practice Guidance so long as there is a reasonable prospect of the order being made.

Read the wording carefully before you accept it. A condition tied to the start of works stops the whole site, while one tied to occupation of the affected phase lets you build on. On a phased scheme that difference can be worth more than every other item here combined. Where the drafting is wrong, ask for it to be changed before the decision is issued. And if the decision has already gone out, apply under section 73 afterwards and pay the fee.

Cost planning of this kind sits with the same evidence base as the rest of the application. Some of it, such as the contaminated land investigation programme, has to happen anyway. See PlanScope pricing if you want the supporting documents drafted and reviewed alongside the order work.

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.