Planning Conditions: What Must You Do Before You Build?

A decision notice that says “PLANNING PERMISSION GRANTED” feels like the finish line. For a lot of projects, it isn’t — it’s a document that grants permission subject to a list of conditions, and buried in that list can be a requirement that has to be satisfied before a single meaningful step towards construction can lawfully begin.

Treating the headline word “granted” as the whole story, without reading what follows it carefully, is one of the more expensive mistakes a self-managing homeowner or a builder working from an unfamiliar decision notice can make. A condition can hold up the start of a project, prevent occupation later on, dictate materials or landscaping, or remain attached to how a property can be used long after the builders have left.

The detailed legal position below is for England. Planning conditions and procedures differ elsewhere in the UK.

Conditions aren’t all doing the same job

It helps to think about conditions in practical categories, even though planning law itself doesn’t always use these exact labels. Some conditions genuinely stop development starting until specified details have been approved by the council. Others bite at a later stage — before above-ground construction, before a particular element is installed or before the building is occupied. Some simply require the project to comply with the approved drawings or another stated requirement without anything further being submitted for approval. Others control how the completed development can be used.

Current national policy says planning conditions should only be imposed where they are necessary, relevant, sufficiently precise and reasonable, and specifically says conditions that have to be discharged before development commences should be avoided unless there is clear justification. The current National Planning Policy Framework also says condition-discharge applications should be dealt with promptly.

For the person about to build, though, the important point is not memorising planning terminology. It is identifying the trigger written into each condition.

The table is only a guide. The precise wording on the actual decision notice controls the position, which is why relying on what happened on another project can be risky.

Why pre-commencement conditions deserve real attention

This is the category capable of causing the most serious problem, but the legal position is more nuanced than the familiar advice simply to “discharge everything before you start”.

Planning lawyers commonly refer to the Whitley principle, originating in F G Whitley & Sons v Secretary of State for Wales. Broadly, where a condition prevents development commencing until an important requirement has been satisfied, work carried out in breach of that condition may fail to amount to a lawful implementation of the planning permission.

That matters because planning permissions normally have to be lawfully begun within the period stated on the permission — commonly three years. If the work relied upon to keep the permission alive did not amount to lawful commencement, the permission may expire despite physical work having taken place.

It is nevertheless too broad to say that every undischarged condition containing the words “before commencement” automatically invalidates everything done afterwards. Later cases have looked closely at the wording and purpose of the condition and, in particular, whether it genuinely prevents commencement and goes to the heart of what has been permitted. The High Court’s decision in Meisels v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is a useful modern illustration of the way that principle is approached.

That legal distinction is important when something has already gone wrong. It is not a sensible distinction on which to programme a building project. If the decision notice says no development is to commence until drainage, tree protection, archaeology, contamination, levels, access or another matter has been approved, the practical answer is to obtain the required approval before starting rather than hoping later that the condition will be judged insufficiently fundamental to affect commencement.

There is some protection at application stage. In England, a pre-commencement condition generally cannot be imposed on a full planning permission without the applicant’s written agreement, subject to the statutory procedure and exceptions. But once the permission has been issued, the responsibility for complying with what it actually says still sits with the developer.

What actually counts as starting work?

This is where the apparently simple instruction “don’t start before the conditions are discharged” becomes more interesting.

For the statutory time limit on a planning permission, development is generally treated as begun when a material operation forming part of the permitted development starts. Section 56 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 includes construction work, demolition, digging a trench that is to contain foundations, laying certain underground mains or pipes to foundations, and operations involved in constructing a road.

That means absolutely anything happening on the site does not necessarily implement the permission. Routine vegetation clearance, setting up temporary fencing or digging an exploratory trial pit is not automatically the material operation needed to keep a permission alive. A genuine foundation trench forming part of the approved development may be.

There is another layer to this. The wording of an individual condition may itself refer to “any works”, “works on site” or some other trigger. Something can therefore create a condition-compliance problem even where there is a separate argument about whether it constitutes statutory commencement for the purposes of section 56.

For somebody approaching the expiry date of a permission, this distinction matters enormously. A token hole in the ground is not a safe implementation strategy, and neither is instructing a contractor simply to “make a start”. The operation relied upon should form part of the permitted development, while the decision notice must be checked for anything that was required beforehand.

Getting conditions discharged: what’s actually involved

“Discharging a condition” is the familiar expression, although the formal process is generally an application for approval of details reserved by condition. You submit whatever the condition asks for — perhaps materials, drainage details, tree protection measures, ecological mitigation, levels or access drawings — and ask the local planning authority to approve it.

Submitting the application is not the same thing as obtaining the approval. If the wording says the details must be approved before development begins, getting the documents into the planning portal the day before the builder arrives does not normally satisfy that requirement.

Several conditions can often be dealt with through one application, but each still needs a proper answer. A submission referring to condition 4 does not discharge condition 4 if the information supplied does not actually meet what condition 4 requires.

There is also a fee. From 1 April 2026, the fee in England for approval or confirmation of compliance with planning conditions is £89 where it relates to householder development and £309 in other cases. Because planning fees are now subject to annual indexation, the current amount should always be checked against the government’s planning fee information before submitting.

Time can matter more than the fee. Government guidance on planning conditions says the local planning authority should normally determine a condition-discharge application within eight weeks, unless a longer period is agreed. If no decision is made within 12 weeks, the application fee must normally be returned, although that does not itself mean the condition has been approved.

For some eligible conditions there is a separate deemed-discharge procedure intended to deal with council delay. It has to be actively invoked: once at least six weeks have passed, an applicant can in appropriate cases serve a formal deemed-discharge notice, but the condition does not simply become discharged because six weeks have elapsed. The procedure has its own timing rules and exemptions, so it is something to use deliberately rather than assume.

For a homeowner with a builder booked, the project-management lesson is straightforward. Condition discharge belongs in the construction programme, not in the final week before machinery is due on site. An eight-week determination period can consume a substantial part of the gap between receiving planning permission and wanting to build, particularly if the first submission is incomplete.

If the real problem is that the condition itself has become impractical or needs changing, that is different from discharging it. In appropriate circumstances a section 73 application can be used to seek removal or variation of a condition; it should not be confused with supplying the information required by the condition already imposed. That fuller question belongs with changing an existing planning permission rather than with the discharge process itself.

Who’s actually checking this on a real project?

On a professionally managed scheme, whoever has been retained to manage the planning side — often an architect, architectural technologist or planning consultant — should identify which conditions require submissions and when they bite.

Retained is the important word. A homeowner should not assume that because an architect obtained planning permission, their appointment automatically includes preparing and submitting every condition-discharge application. Some professional appointments end, or move into a different paid stage, when the planning decision is issued. The scope needs checking.

Nor should a builder automatically be treated as the project’s planning compliance manager. An experienced builder may immediately recognise an obvious pre-start condition, but their price may have been prepared from the drawings rather than from a detailed legal reading of the planning decision.

Building Control does not fill that gap either. Planning permission and Building Regulations are separate systems. A building-control inspector accepting notification that work is starting, inspecting foundations or approving work under the Building Regulations does not thereby discharge a planning condition.

For a self-managing homeowner, one of the most useful jobs after permission arrives is therefore remarkably simple: read every numbered condition and mark its trigger against the construction programme. The question is not merely “does this condition require something?” but “by when?”

A materials approval needed before those materials are installed is a different programme problem from a drainage scheme that must be approved before any development starts. A landscaping condition required before occupation is different again. Once those trigger points are understood, the conditions stop being an intimidating block of planning language and become tasks that can actually be programmed, costed and assigned.

The written approvals should then be kept with the property’s permanent planning records. Years later, evidence that conditions were properly discharged can matter during a sale, refinancing or other property due diligence, when the people originally involved in the project may no longer be available to explain what happened.

The dangerous version is the permission left unread in an email attachment while the builder books machinery and everybody assumes somebody else has dealt with it.

“Planning permission granted” is an important milestone, but for a conditioned permission it is not an instruction to start building. Before work begins, the decision notice needs to be treated as part of the construction documents: read it, identify what must happen before commencement and at later stages, establish who is responsible for each requirement, allow realistic time for council approval and retain the written decisions when they arrive.

That first careful read can prevent a surprisingly complicated and expensive problem later.

Important: This article provides general property and planning information, not legal advice or a formal interpretation of an individual planning permission. The detailed legal and procedural position discussed is principally that applying in England as at 1 October 2026. Whether a condition prevents lawful commencement, whether particular works amount to commencement and what is required to satisfy a condition can depend on the precise wording and circumstances. If commencement or the validity of a permission is in doubt, obtain advice from an appropriately qualified planning professional or planning lawyer before carrying out work.