The statutory planning register and what must be on it

Planning register requirements come from the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, which obliges every local planning authority in England to keep a register of applications and to make it available for public inspection at all reasonable hours. The online search most people use is the council's chosen way of meeting that duty, not the duty itself.

That distinction matters when something you need is not online. The statutory record is wider than the portal, and you can ask to see it.

The duty to keep a register

The register is kept in parts. One holds applications that have not been finally disposed of, meaning those still under consideration or subject to an undetermined appeal. Another holds applications that have been decided, with the particulars of the decision.

Alongside those sit entries for other matters the Order requires to be recorded, including prior approval applications, screening and scoping opinions for environmental impact assessment, and details of appeals and their outcomes.

The authority has to make the register available for inspection. It does not have to put every document on a website, and it does not have to keep a website working, which is why a portal outage is an inconvenience rather than a breach. Ask the planning support team for access to the register itself if the online version is failing you.

What the register holds

For each application you should expect to find the application form, the plans and drawings submitted, the supporting documents, the consultation responses received, the officer's report where the decision was delegated or the committee report where it was not, and the decision notice with its conditions and reasons.

The decision notice is the document that matters most. It carries the description of development, the list of approved plans by number and revision, and every condition. A permission is what the decision notice says it is, and the approved plans list defines what was actually permitted.

Supporting documents vary in how they are presented. A Planning Statement and any specialist reports should be there in full, though very large files are sometimes held offline and supplied on request.

Consultation responses from statutory consultees are part of the record. So are objections and letters of support, with personal details removed.

Enforcement and other statutory registers

The applications register is not the only one. Authorities must also keep a register of enforcement notices and stop notices, which records what was served, on what land, and what it required.

That register is worth checking before buying property and before starting work on a site with an unclear history. An enforcement notice runs with the land, so it binds a later owner who knew nothing about it. If a notice has been served and not complied with, the position does not improve with time. Our note on planning contravention notices covers the earlier stage, where the council is still gathering information.

Councils also maintain brownfield land registers, registers of local land charges, and in many areas a register of section 106 agreements and their obligations. The land charges search carried out on a purchase picks up much of this, but it is not a substitute for reading the planning history yourself.

How long entries remain available

The statutory register for decided applications is a permanent record. It does not expire when a permission lapses, and it does not stop being relevant when a building is demolished.

Online availability is a different matter. Most councils digitised their records at some point between the late 1990s and the mid 2000s, and applications before that date are often held as paper files or microfiche. A search that returns nothing before 2003 usually means the portal starts there, not that nothing happened.

Ask for a planning history search if you need the earlier material. Some authorities charge for it, most will provide a list of references, and the files themselves can then be requested. On older properties this is how you find the permission that authorised the extension nobody has documentation for, or the condition that removed permitted development rights on an estate.

Expired permissions stay on the register too, which is how you establish what was once approved and whether it was implemented. That question decides whether a temporary permission or a lapsed consent can still be relied on.

What is redacted and why

Personal data is removed before documents are published. Signatures, telephone numbers, email addresses and the private addresses of objectors are routinely redacted, and the council is applying data protection law rather than exercising a preference.

Some material is withheld for other reasons. Commercially confidential viability information is sometimes published as a summary only. Documents relating to protected species, particularly badger setts and bat roosts, may have location details removed to prevent persecution. Security information about certain buildings is withheld.

Copyright is a separate issue. Drawings on the register can be viewed and, in most cases, downloaded for the purpose of understanding the application, but reproducing an architect's drawings for another purpose is a copyright matter between you and the author.

If you think something has been wrongly withheld, ask the council which exemption it is relying on. Where the answer is unsatisfactory, a request under the environmental information regime is usually the right route for planning material rather than a freedom of information request, because planning information is environmental information.

Using the register for planning history

For most practical purposes the register answers four questions.

1. What has been applied for on this site, and what was decided.
2. What conditions attach to the permission being relied on, and have they been discharged.
3. Which plans were approved, by number and revision.
4. Has anything been refused, and on what grounds.

The third is the one people skip. A decision notice listing plans by number means the permission covers those drawings and nothing else, so a building constructed to a later revision may not be authorised.

Refusal history is equally useful, because the reasons for refusal tell you what the authority objected to and whether a revised scheme has addressed it. On a site with a long history, reading the officer reports in sequence shows how the council's position has moved, which is more informative than any single decision.

Where you are following a live application rather than researching an old one, the mechanics are covered in our note on tracking a neighbouring application.

When the register is wrong

Mistakes happen. A drawing is missing, a condition is mistyped, a decision is recorded against the wrong address, or a document was never scanned.

Start by asking the planning support team to check the file against the register entry. Most errors are clerical and get corrected on request, and the council can reissue a corrected version of a document it has published incorrectly.

An error in the decision notice itself is more serious, because the notice is the legal document. Where a condition contains an obvious slip, councils commonly deal with it through a non-material amendment application, which is a formal step rather than a correction by email. Errors in an inspector's appeal decision are dealt with under the statutory correction provisions, and there is a defined window for that.

A register error does not change what was permitted. If the register shows something the decision notice does not, the decision notice governs, and the same applies in reverse where a document is missing from the register but was plainly before the decision maker.

Browse all 66 report types to see which documents a modern application is expected to include.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.