When an application is made invalid after submission

An invalid planning application is one the authority has decided it cannot entertain, and until it is made valid the eight week clock has not started. The application does not exist in law. Nothing is consulted on, no officer is allocated, and the target date you promised the client is meaningless. Most invalidations are triggered by one missing drawing, an unscaled location plan or an ownership certificate signed in the wrong box.

Section 327A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 puts the duty in blunt terms: the authority must not entertain an application unless it complies with the applicable requirements. That is not a discretion the validation officer is choosing to exercise. It is a bar.

Why validation happens after submission

The Planning Portal takes the forms, the drawings and the fee and passes them to the council. It does not check them against that council's local list. Validation is a separate, manual exercise carried out by the authority once the submission lands, usually within five to ten working days, and it compares your pack against two things: the national requirements set out in the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, and the authority's own published local list.

The national requirements are stable. Form, plans identifying the land, the correct fee, ownership certificates and the agricultural holdings certificate, and a Design and Access Statement where one is required. The local list is where submissions come unstuck, because every authority writes its own and thresholds differ across a boundary.

A local list requirement also has a shelf life. The Order provides that a local requirement ceases to have effect if it was published more than two years before the application was made. Authorities do let lists lapse. If you are told to supply a document that appears only on a list dated three years ago, say so in writing.

What the authority must tell you

Practice varies, and the quality of invalidation letters varies with it. What you should receive is a written notice identifying each item that is missing or deficient, with the specific national requirement or numbered local list entry relied on, and a date by which the items are needed.

What you often receive instead is a line saying the application is invalid because the plans are inadequate. Push back on that immediately and ask for the requirement to be identified. An unparticularised invalidation is hard to fix and harder to challenge, and every day spent guessing is a day the clock is not running.

Keep the correspondence. If the matter goes to a non-determination appeal later, the date the application became valid is contested ground, and the letters decide it.

The fee position when an application is returned

The fee is paid on submission, so on invalidation the council is holding money for an application it will not determine. Two outcomes are normal. Either the fee is held on account while you supply the missing items, in which case nothing further is payable, or the application is returned and the fee refunded, often less an administrative charge for the work already done.

There is no national rule setting that administrative charge, and there is no statutory right to a full refund of a returned application fee. Authorities publish their own practice. Ask before you assume, particularly on a major where the fee runs to five figures.

The fee itself is set by the fees regulations and indexed annually on 1 April, so check the current schedule rather than the figure quoted in a fee letter from last year. Resubmitting later can mean paying the higher rate.

How long you have to supply missing items

Most authorities give between 14 and 28 days, stated in the invalidation letter, before the application is returned and the file closed. Some give longer on majors. The period is administrative rather than statutory, so it can be extended by agreement, and validation teams are generally reasonable about a survey that has a seasonal window.

That last point is worth planning around. If the missing item is a bat emergence survey, the window runs from May to September and no amount of goodwill produces one in January. Say that in the reply and ask for the application to be held rather than returned, or withdraw and resubmit when the evidence exists.

Supply everything in one response. A partial response restarts the review and adds another week.

The effect on the determination period

The statutory period runs from the day after the date the valid application was received. Eight weeks for a minor or householder application, 13 weeks for a major, 16 weeks where the development is EIA development. An application that sat invalid for three weeks simply starts three weeks later, and you cannot backdate it.

Two practical consequences follow. First, a right of appeal for non-determination arises only once the statutory period has expired from the valid date, so a disputed validation date can delay an appeal by weeks. Second, the details entered on the public register, including the valid date, are what everyone else works from, which is covered in more depth in our note on the statutory planning register.

Disputing an invalidity decision

There is no statutory appeal against a refusal to validate. That is the uncomfortable part, and it is why validation disputes are usually won by argument rather than by process.

The strongest argument is statutory. Section 62 of the 1990 Act, as amended in 2013, limits what an authority can demand through its local list to information that is reasonable having regard to the nature and scale of the proposed development, and that relates to a matter it is reasonable to think will be a material consideration in determining the application. A demand for a Transport Assessment on a two bedroom rear extension fails both limbs. Set that out in writing, addressed to the validation team leader, and copy the development management manager.

Where argument fails, the practical routes are to supply the document under protest and note the objection, to withdraw and resubmit once the point is resolved, or in rare cases to seek judicial review of the authority's approach. Judicial review is expensive and slow, and for a single householder application it is almost never proportionate.

On a cross-boundary site the problem doubles, because two authorities validate independently against different lists. That scenario is dealt with separately in our guide to applications to two councils.

Avoiding it on the next submission

Download the authority's local validation list on the day you submit, not the day you started the drawings. Check its publication date while you are there.

Then work through the items that cause most returns. The location plan must be to a recognised scale, typically 1:1250 or 1:2500, with the application site edged red and any other land in the applicant's control edged blue. The red line must include the access to a public highway. Ownership certificates A to D must match the title, and certificate B needs the notice served on the other owner before submission, not after. Existing and proposed elevations must be provided for every affected elevation, floor plans must be labelled, and every drawing needs a unique number, a scale and a scale bar.

Where a supporting document is required, name it on the form and in the drawing schedule so the validation officer can tick it off without hunting. A short, well structured Planning Statement that lists the submitted documents against the local list items earns goodwill and occasionally saves a return. If you are unsure which reports the site triggers, the full report index groups them by category.

Illustrative example. An architect submits a 14 unit scheme on a Friday, with the fee paid and a covering email. The council returns it the following Thursday for three reasons: no Biodiversity Net Gain statement, no drainage strategy and a location plan that omits the access strip. The BNG work takes six weeks. The valid date lands in mid November, the 13 week period expires in February, and a committee cycle is missed. Nothing in that sequence was a planning judgement. This example is illustrative.

This is general guidance rather than 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.