Temporary permission or personal permission: which

A temporary permission limits how long the development may continue. A personal permission limits who may carry it on. They solve different problems, and asking for the wrong one is a common way to end up with a consent you cannot sell, finance or renew. If the council's concern is that the effects of a use are untested, the answer is a time limit. If the concern is that the use is only acceptable because of who is running it, the answer is a personal condition.

What a temporary permission does

Section 72 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 lets an authority grant permission subject to a condition requiring the removal of buildings or works, or the discontinuance of a use, at the end of a specified period, with the land restored.

The mechanics are simple and the consequences are not. When the period expires the permission is spent. Continuing the use after that date is a breach of planning control, and the authority can serve an enforcement notice without needing to argue about whether the use was ever acceptable.

The Planning Practice Guidance is restrictive about when this is appropriate. A temporary permission is not a way of granting something unacceptable for a shorter period. Where a proposal is unacceptable in principle, a trial run does not make it acceptable, and where the applicant would have to make substantial capital investment to implement the permission, a short time limit is unreasonable because the investment cannot be recovered.

Where it does work is where the effects are the unknown. A new use in a mixed area where the noise and traffic consequences have never been tested, a meanwhile use on a site awaiting redevelopment, an extended hours trial for an existing business.

What a personal permission does

Section 75 provides that planning permission normally enures for the benefit of the land and of all persons for the time being interested in it, except in so far as the permission otherwise provides. That exception is the statutory hook for a personal condition.

A personal permission ties the consent to a named individual or company. When that person stops occupying or operating, the permission falls away and the use must cease. It does not transfer with the freehold.

The guidance treats these as a departure from the normal approach, justified only by special circumstances. The usual justification is that the planning objection to the use would be decisive but for something particular to the occupier: an established local operator with a track record, an occupier whose personal circumstances are themselves a material consideration, or a use whose acceptability rests on the way one operator runs it.

Where each is appropriate

Test the council's concern before proposing either.

If an officer says the traffic generation is unknown, a temporary permission with a monitoring requirement addresses it, because the evidence will exist by the time renewal is considered. If an officer says the noise from a late licence would be unacceptable in principle, a temporary permission does not address anything and will simply postpone the argument.

If the concern is that a similar operator would run the premises badly, a personal permission is the honest instrument, though officers should first consider whether conditions on hours, capacity and management would control the effects instead. Conditions on effects are usually preferable to conditions on identity, because they survive a change of occupier and do not blight the property.

For a food business, the questions that decide this are often technical rather than philosophical, and the difference between an air quality assessment and an odour assessment is exactly the sort of evidence that turns an untested effect into a known one.

Enforceability and succession

Both instruments are enforceable, but they behave differently over time.

A temporary permission enforces itself by the calendar. The authority does not have to prove harm, only that the date has passed and the use continues. From a lender's point of view a time-limited consent is a wasting asset, and refinancing in the final years is hard.

A personal permission needs the authority to establish that the named person has ceased to occupy, which in practice means noticing a change of operator. Businesses change hands quietly. And an authority that only discovers the change three years later has an evidential problem as well as a policy one. The permission is also close to worthless on a sale, because the buyer inherits a building with no consent for the use being carried on in it. That single consequence is why a personal condition should be resisted where the planning concern can be met another way.

Both types can be varied by an application under section 73, which is the route to remove a time limit or a personal condition once the operation has proved itself.

Renewal, expiry and combining the two

Do not assume renewal. The guidance indicates that a second temporary permission will rarely be justified, because by then the authority should either accept the use permanently or refuse it.

So use the temporary period. Collect the evidence the council said was missing, in the form it said it wanted, and apply to remove the time condition before the final year rather than in it. An application made three months before expiry, with two years of monitoring data, is a different proposition from one made after the enforcement letter arrives.

Conditions that combine both appear where the case rests on a particular occupier and the situation is expected to change. They are legitimate, and doubly restrictive, so be clear which of the two limbs is doing the work and whether both are necessary.

Arguing for one at committee

Three points carry weight, and a fourth undermines you.

Say precisely what the trial is testing and how it will be measured. Offer the monitoring yourself, with a method and a reporting date, rather than waiting for a condition. Propose a period long enough to gather meaningful evidence and, where capital investment is involved, long enough to justify it.

The mistake is offering a temporary permission as a fallback inside your main submission. It tells the committee you doubt the scheme, and officers will take the offer while keeping their objection. Argue the permanent case, and address the temporary alternative only if it is raised.

Whichever route you take, the reasoning belongs in a Planning Statement that engages with the guidance on both condition types, supported by the technical evidence on the effect in question, which for hours and operations is usually a Noise Impact Assessment. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your proposal 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.