Suggesting conditions to a planning inspector

Submitting suggested conditions planning appeal schedules is standard practice, and the reason is simple. An inspector who allows an appeal has to impose conditions, and the only alternative to using yours is drafting them from scratch with no knowledge of your drawing numbers, your phasing or your construction sequence. Agreed schedules get adopted almost verbatim. Badly drafted ones get rewritten in terms you will spend the next three years living with.

Why appellants draft conditions

Three reasons, in order of practical weight.

The first is control of the wording. A condition requiring details to be approved before any development starts is a different animal from one requiring approval before the relevant part of the work begins, and you will care about that distinction when the contractor arrives.

The second is that a condition can answer a reason for refusal. Where the authority refused because the effect on protected trees was unassessed, a condition securing a tree protection plan and arboricultural supervision addresses it without any change to the scheme.

The third is that a schedule demonstrates you have thought about implementation. Inspectors notice. An appellant who turns up with a considered schedule reads as someone who intends to build what they have drawn.

Agreeing a schedule with the authority

Even where the council is resisting the appeal, its officers will usually agree a conditions schedule, because they also prefer their own wording to an inspector's improvisation.

Approach it as a document with three columns: the condition, the reason, and whether it is agreed. Mark disputed conditions clearly rather than burying the disagreement in different wording. Where the authority wants a condition you resist, include it in the schedule, flagged, with a short note of your objection.

Send it early, with your statement of case rather than at the end. On an inquiry, the conditions schedule is usually dealt with in a round-table session near the close, and the inspector will expect a document that has already been through the authority.

One habit saves trouble. Attach the drawing list as a separate schedule with revision numbers and dates, and keep it identical across your statement, the conditions and the drawings themselves.

Conditions that cure a reason for refusal

This is the part worth real effort, because a condition that answers a refusal reason can decide the appeal.

That last row contains the catch. A condition requiring something outside your control is unenforceable, which is why visibility splay conditions fail where the land belongs to a neighbour. The evidence point behind it is covered in our note on highway safety refusals and visibility splay evidence.

Precision and enforceability

The Planning Practice Guidance on the use of planning conditions sets six tests. A condition must be necessary, relevant to planning, relevant to the development permitted, enforceable, precise, and reasonable in all other respects. Inspectors apply them one at a time.

What fails in practice:

• "Shall be agreed with the local planning authority", which gives no mechanism. Use submitted to and approved in writing by.
• Conditions that require a third party to act, or that depend on land you do not control.
• Conditions reciting what the applicant has already said they will do, which are unnecessary.
• Vague standards: appropriate materials, suitable landscaping, adequate parking. Name the standard or the dimension.
• Conditions that would make the permission unimplementable, such as requiring retention of something the approved drawings remove.
• Duplication of other regimes, such as conditions restating building regulations or environmental permitting requirements.

Write the reason for each condition as carefully as the condition itself. A reason that recites a policy number without explaining the harm being controlled makes the condition harder to defend if you later apply to vary it.

Pre-commencement conditions on appeal

Section 100ZA of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 restricts the imposition of pre-commencement conditions without the applicant's written agreement, with a procedure for seeking that agreement set out in the Town and Country Planning (Pre-commencement Conditions) Regulations 2018.

On an appeal, expect to be asked whether you agree to each pre-commencement condition, and think before refusing. Withholding agreement to a condition the inspector considers necessary does not delete the problem. It may mean the appeal is dismissed because the harm cannot be controlled.

The better approach is to negotiate the trigger. Many conditions drafted as pre-start are perfectly workable as pre-superstructure, pre-occupation or pre-first-use, and an inspector will usually accept a later trigger where the purpose of the condition is still served. Landscaping before occupation rather than before demolition. Materials samples before the walls go up rather than before groundworks.

Disputed conditions and how they are handled

Where a condition is in dispute, the inspector decides it in the decision rather than at the event, but the argument has to be put while the event is live.

At an inquiry that means the round-table session, where each disputed condition is taken in turn and the parties state their position. On written representations, it means setting out the objection in your statement with a reason tied to the six tests, because there is no later opportunity.

Do not concede a condition you cannot live with just to appear cooperative. A condition restricting hours of use, limiting occupancy or requiring a scheme to be delivered before occupation can change the economics of the development, and the appeal decision is final subject only to a statutory challenge. Appeal decisions on comparable conditions can help you argue the point, treated as indicative rather than binding, as our guide to using appeal decisions in a planning application explains.

Checking the conditions on the decision

Read the decision letter the day it arrives, not when you need to discharge something.

Check the drawing numbers and revisions against your own list. Check that a condition you agreed in a later trigger has not reverted to pre-commencement. Check for conditions that contradict each other, which happens when a schedule has been edited late. And check the reasons, because they shape how the authority will approach a discharge application.

Where there is an obvious slip, a section 96A non-material amendment is the quick route for a wrong drawing number. Where a condition is substantively unworkable, a section 73 application to vary it is the proper route, and it is better done early than after a breach.

The policy case for the scheme, including why each condition is sufficient to control the harm alleged, belongs in a Planning Statement at application stage and in the appeal statement afterwards. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which supporting reports a resubmission or appeal scheme is likely to need.

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.