Time limits for implementing a planning permission

A full planning permission in England lapses three years after it is granted unless the development has been lawfully begun. That default planning permission time limit comes from section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Outline permission runs on two clocks instead of one: reserved matters must be applied for within three years of the outline grant, and the development begun within two years of the final approval of those matters. Miss either date and the permission is dead. There is no renewal form.

The default period for full permission

Section 91 requires the council to attach a condition fixing the period within which development must begin. If it forgets, the Act supplies three years automatically. Councils can impose a shorter or longer period where the circumstances justify it, which happens more often than self-builders expect on sites with seasonal constraints or phased infrastructure.

So the first thing to do with any decision notice is read condition 1 rather than assume three years. The three-year default only dates from the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which cut it from five. Permissions granted before then, still occasionally relied on where land has been held a long time, may carry the older five-year wording.

Three years sounds generous. It stops sounding generous once you have discharged pre-commencement conditions, signed a section 106 agreement, secured building regulations approval and found a builder.

Outline permission and the reserved matters clock

Section 92 handles outline permission, and it catches people out because the two periods run consecutively rather than in parallel.

Two points follow. The reserved matters application must be made within the three years, not determined within them, so a submission in the final fortnight still counts. And where reserved matters are approved in tranches, the two-year clock runs from the last approval, not the first.

A reserved matters application submitted one day late cannot be validated as a reserved matters application at all. The council will tell you to start again with a fresh outline or full application, against whatever policy now applies.

Conditions that impose a different period

Read the whole condition, not the headline number. A condition may require commencement within two years because of a bat licence window, or within five because of a strategic road scheme. Some permissions for temporary uses carry both a start date and a cessation date, and the cessation date is the one that bites later.

Personal and temporary permissions sit outside the normal pattern entirely. A permission personal to a named occupier ends when that occupier leaves, whatever the start condition says.

Why a permission can no longer simply be extended

Section 73 of the 1990 Act lets you apply to vary or remove conditions. Section 73(5) expressly stops it being used to extend the time for beginning development or for applying for reserved matters. That subsection is the reason there is no extension application.

A temporary procedure did exist. Between 1 October 2009 and 1 October 2012 the government allowed applications to extend unimplemented permissions granted before April 2010, to help schemes stalled by the financial crisis. It was withdrawn. The Business and Planning Act 2020 then created a one-off route for permissions due to lapse during the pandemic, with its own cut-off dates, and that route has expired as well. Neither is available now.

One practical consequence: a section 73 permission is a new permission in law, but because of section 73(5) it cannot reset the clock. Councils normally carry the original start date across into the new decision notice. Check that they have, because an error either way is worth knowing about before you rely on it.

What implementation actually requires

Section 56(4) sets out the operations that count as beginning development. They include digging a trench that is to hold a foundation, laying out or constructing a road or part of one, laying underground mains or pipes to a foundation trench or road, any work of construction in the course of erecting a building, any demolition work, and any material change of use.

The trap is the Whitley principle, from the Court of Appeal decision in Whitley and Sons v Secretary of State for Wales. Works carried out in breach of a condition that had to be satisfied before development started are not lawful works, so they do not implement the permission. Dig your trench while the contamination remediation scheme or the construction management plan is still unapproved and you may have done nothing at all, in planning terms, except commit a breach.

That is why the sequence matters more than the date. Discharge every pre-commencement condition first, in writing, and keep the decision notice.

Options as the expiry date approaches

1. Audit the conditions. Separate the pre-commencement ones from the rest and apply to discharge them at least three months out, since the determination period for a discharge application is eight weeks and consultees add time.
2. Carry out a genuine material operation and record it properly.
3. Submit a duplicate application for the same scheme, accepting that it will be judged against current policy, including mandatory biodiversity net gain if the original predated it.
4. Use section 73 for any design changes you want, knowing it will not buy you time.
5. Let it lapse deliberately where policy has moved in your favour, which occasionally it has.

Option three is the honest fallback for most small developers, and it needs its own document pack. A fresh application means a fresh Planning Statement and, for anything beyond a householder scheme, the rest of the supporting evidence the validation list asks for. Where a council sits on that resubmission past eight or thirteen weeks, the deemed refusal appeal is available, though it rarely helps a scheme that needs the permission quickly.

Evidence that the permission was implemented

Implementation is a question of fact, and the burden falls on whoever asserts it, usually years later when a buyer's solicitor asks. Build the evidence at the time.

Dated and geotagged photographs of the excavation, the contractor's invoice and delivery notes, the building control initial notice and inspection record, and a short signed note from the person who did the work all help. A statutory declaration written a decade afterwards, with nothing behind it, does not.

The formal route is a certificate of lawfulness of existing use or development under section 191 of the 1990 Act. It costs a fee and takes eight weeks, and it settles the question. For a site that will be sold or refinanced, that is money well spent.

Illustrative example: a permission for four dwellings granted in October granted with three pre-commencement conditions. Discharge applications submitted in month 28 are determined in month 31. Foundation trenches are dug in month 33, photographed and invoiced. The permission is implemented with three months to spare, and the file holds enough to prove it.

Planning the sequence backwards

Start from the expiry date and work back. Bat emergence surveys run between May and September, great crested newt eDNA sampling between 15 April and 30 June, and a missed season costs a year rather than a month. Biodiversity net gain adds a biodiversity gain plan that the council must approve before development begins, which is itself a pre-commencement step.

Policy moves under you as well. A resubmission lands against the current National Planning Policy Framework position and the current local plan, and a scheme that was acceptable in 2023 may not be in 2027. Where a holding direction has delayed the original decision, the implementation clock still runs from the date the permission was eventually issued, not from the committee resolution.

If a resubmission is on the cards, work out which supporting documents you need before you start drafting. PlanScope's guided flow takes a postcode and a few answers and shows which of the 66 report types a site is likely to need, then drafts them for review.

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.