What it costs to make a lawful start on a permission

A material start on a planning permission usually costs a few hundred pounds in plant and labour. Get the sequence wrong and it costs you the permission. The works themselves are modest: a foundation trench, a short run of drainage, the first few metres of an access road. What makes a material start on planning permission expensive is everything that has to be settled before the excavator arrives, because an operation carried out while a pre-commencement condition is still outstanding may not begin the development at all.

Most permissions carry a condition requiring development to begin within three years, under section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. For an outline permission, section 92 splits that into a period for submitting reserved matters and a shorter period after the final approval. Miss either and the consent lapses, with no right of renewal.

What counts as a material operation

Section 56(4) of the 1990 Act sets out the operations that begin development. The list is narrow and physical.

Two points matter here. The operation has to relate to the permission being implemented, on the land it covers, and it has to be a genuine operation rather than a token gesture staged for the file. Courts have accepted small works as sufficient, so scale is rarely the problem. Authenticity and sequence are.

Clearing vegetation, erecting a site hoarding, sinking boreholes for ground investigation and installing a temporary compound are not on the list. Neither is submitting a building regulations application. A client who has fenced the site and cut back the hedge has not started anything.

The conditions that can stop a start being lawful

This is where permissions die. If a condition has to be discharged before development begins and it has not been, the operation may be carried out in breach of that condition, and the courts have held that works in breach of such a condition cannot amount to a lawful commencement. The permission then runs out of time while the client believes it is safe.

Read every condition and sort them into three piles: those requiring approval before any development, those tied to a later trigger such as commencement of superstructure or first occupation, and those that are purely informative. Pre-commencement conditions cannot be imposed on a planning permission without the applicant's written agreement, under section 100ZA of the 1990 Act, so there should be fewer of them than there once were. There are still plenty.

Discharge applications carry a fee per request under the national fee regulations, with a lower figure for householder permissions, and the schedule is indexed annually on 1 April. Check the current schedule rather than a number quoted in an old file note. Allow eight weeks for determination and longer where a condition needs a consultee response, which in practice means starting the discharge work three to four months before the expiry date.

A biodiversity gain condition sits in its own category. Where the statutory regime applies, development must not begin until the local planning authority has approved a biodiversity gain plan, and if the gain is being delivered through purchased units then the off-site biodiversity credit purchase has to be arranged well in advance of the trench being dug.

Notices to serve before anyone arrives on site

Several notices have nothing to do with planning conditions but will cause trouble if they are skipped.

1. Assume liability for the Community Infrastructure Levy and serve the commencement notice on the collecting authority before works begin.
2. Submit any levy exemption or relief claim and wait for it to be granted, because self-build and residential extension exemptions are lost if works start first.
3. Give the building control body an initial notice or full plans deposit, and serve a section 80 notice under the Building Act 1984 where demolition is involved.
4. Serve party wall notices where the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies, and allow for the statutory notice periods.
5. Apply for highway licences for scaffolding, hoardings or any excavation in the public highway, and complete any section 278 agreement for works to the public road.

The highway items catch people out most often. A permission whose only realistic material start is forming the access cannot be implemented until the highway authority has signed off the works, and that agreement takes months.

What a minimum start actually involves

An illustrative example. A self-builder holds a permission for a single dwelling expiring in six weeks, with two pre-commencement conditions, both discharged. The access is to be formed under a section 278 agreement that is not yet complete, so the road cannot be touched. The least costly lawful option is a measured foundation trench along part of the approved footprint, set out by the engineer from the approved drawings, excavated by a mini-digger and operator for a day, with the arisings stockpiled on site.

The direct costs are plant hire, an operator, a few hours of the engineer's time and a site visit by the agent to photograph it. Against that, weigh the fees already sunk in the application, the technical reports, and the price of starting again under a local plan that may have moved against the scheme. The arithmetic almost always favours making the start.

But a trench dug and immediately backfilled, with no intention of building, invites an argument that no genuine operation took place. Dig it where the building goes, to the depth the design needs, and leave it open or sheeted.

The levy liability that starts with the first trench

Commencement is the moment Community Infrastructure Levy liability crystallises. The Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 require the liable party to be registered and a commencement notice to be served before work starts. Fail on either and the authority can impose surcharges, withdraw the right to pay by instalments and demand the full charge immediately. The surcharges are calculated by reference to the chargeable amount and capped, and the figures sit in the regulations themselves.

Rates come from the authority's own charging schedule, are set in pounds per square metre by use and zone, and are indexed. Never budget from a neighbouring council's schedule.

Section 106 obligations have their own triggers. Read the deed before starting: some payments fall due on commencement rather than on occupation, and a start made without the first instalment in place puts the developer in breach of a planning obligation from day one. If the viability case for the scheme was marginal, model the cash flow for commencement separately from the build programme, the way you would when budgeting a viability appraisal and the review it triggers.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 contains powers for development commencement notices and progress reporting. As at October 2026 those provisions are not fully in force in England, so check the commencement position before relying on either.

Evidence to keep, and why you will need it

Nobody questions a start until years later, when a buyer's solicitor asks whether the permission was implemented. By then the contractor has gone and the photographs are on a lost phone.

Keep a dated photographic record taken from fixed positions, including a wide shot that shows the trench in relation to identifiable features such as a boundary wall or a neighbouring roofline. Keep the plant hire invoice, the delivery tickets, the engineer's setting-out record and a short signed statement from whoever carried out the works describing what was done and when. Write to the case officer confirming the date of commencement and enclosing the photographs, and keep the acknowledgement.

Where the position is already contested, a certificate of lawfulness under section 191 of the 1990 Act is the formal route to confirm that the operations were lawfully carried out. That is a separate application with its own fee and evidential burden, and it is worth understanding what a lawful development certificate application costs before you need one. Agents differ widely on whether implementation advice sits inside their appointment, so check what a planning agent's fixed fee includes at the outset.

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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