Taking over a unit with a personal planning permission

If the unit you are about to take has a personal planning permission condition, the consent does not come with the lease. A personal condition ties the permitted use to a named person or business, so when they leave, the permission stops working and your occupation is a breach of planning control from day one. Check the decision notice before you sign heads of terms, not after the fit-out quote arrives.

Most commercial occupiers never encounter one, because personal conditions are meant to be rare. They turn up on uses the council accepted only because of who was running them: a small charity use in a residential street, a takeaway granted to an operator with an agreed delivery regime, a venue permitted on the strength of a particular management plan.

Why a permission is normally not personal

Section 75(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 says a grant of planning permission enures for the benefit of the land and of all persons for the time being interested in it, except so far as the permission otherwise provides. The default is that permission runs with the land and transfers automatically to anyone who buys or leases it.

A personal condition is the exception written into that section. National guidance on the use of planning conditions treats conditions restricting the benefit of a permission to a named person as appropriate only in exceptional circumstances, usually where there are strong personal or welfare grounds, or where the use would otherwise be unacceptable and the council has accepted it because of specific features of that operator.

That rarity is the lever you will use later. A condition that was unusual when imposed is often harder for the council to defend ten years on.

Finding the limiting words

Pull the full decision notice, not the summary on the public register, and read every condition and the description of development. Personal conditions are drafted in a handful of recognisable ways.

• "This permission shall enure solely for the benefit of X and shall not enure for the benefit of the land."
• "The use hereby permitted shall be carried on only by X and by no other person or body."
• "The use shall cease and the premises shall revert to [former use] when X ceases to occupy the premises."
• "The permission is personal to X and to any successor charity carrying on the same activity."

The fourth drafting is generous and may cover you. The third is the dangerous one, because it does not merely restrict the benefit, it extinguishes the use when the named occupier leaves.

Ask the agent for the application file reference and read the officer report alongside the notice. The report explains why the condition was imposed, and that reasoning is what a later application has to answer.

When the named occupier leaves

Where the condition is drafted as a cesser provision, the lawful use reverts to whatever it was before the permission was implemented. You are not stepping into a permitted use in breach of a condition. There may be no extant permission for the activity at all.

That distinction matters because the enforcement routes differ and so do the time limits. A breach of condition can be dealt with by a breach of condition notice under section 187A of the 1990 Act, against which there is no appeal. An unauthorised change of use is dealt with by an enforcement notice, which can be appealed. Either way, the authority in England now works to a ten year immunity period following the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, with the position for older breaches turning on when they occurred.

Before assuming you need anything, check the use classes. If the lawful use of the unit sits in Class E and your business also sits in Class E, you may be able to operate without relying on the personal permission at all, because movement within that class is not development. Getting the class right is the whole exercise, as anyone who has looked at use class and permitting for a pet crematorium will recognise.

The section 73 route

To remove or vary the condition, apply under section 73 of the 1990 Act for planning permission to develop the land without complying with that condition. A successful application produces a new permission sitting alongside the original one, carrying the conditions the authority now considers necessary.

Section 73 is the normal answer. Allow eight weeks for determination, budget for the fee in the current fee regulations, and expect the authority to reconsult neighbours, because in practice it will.

The six tests

Conditions have to be necessary, relevant to planning, relevant to the development permitted, enforceable, precise and reasonable in all other respects. Your application is an argument that the personal condition now fails at least one of those.

The usual line of attack is necessity. The condition was necessary because of something specific: the operator's management regime, a welfare circumstance, an uncertainty about how the use would behave. If the use has operated for years without complaint, the uncertainty has been answered by events, and a condition controlling the actual impact is a better instrument than a condition controlling who owns the business.

Offer the substitute. An authority is far more likely to remove a personal condition if you hand it a replacement that addresses the real concern: hours of opening, delivery times, a limit on covers, a noise limit at the nearest residential window, a waste storage requirement. Where plant noise was the original worry, a short Noise Impact Assessment with a measured background level does more than any amount of argument.

Evidence that supports removal

Assemble the planning history since the grant: the original application, the officer report, any subsequent applications, complaint records obtained from environmental health, and enforcement records. A clean complaint history over several years is the single most useful document you can produce.

Add the operational evidence a new occupier can give: proposed hours, staff numbers, delivery schedule, waste contract, customer numbers where that is relevant to parking. Put it in a Planning Statement that engages with the adopted local plan policies on the use and on amenity, rather than a covering letter asserting that the condition is unfair.

Where the original consent was temporary as well as personal, the analysis is different again, and the issues that arise in temporary and permanent change of use at barn wedding venues are a reasonable guide to how councils think about it.

If you simply occupy

People do, and the practical consequences arrive later rather than immediately. Enforcement may never come. But a breach of condition notice carries no appeal, your lender may treat the unauthorised use as a title defect, your insurer may take a view, and any attempt to sell the business or assign the lease will surface the problem during due diligence.

The less costly path is almost always to make the section 73 application before fit-out, with the landlord's cooperation and a condition you have drafted yourself.

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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