Planning Applications
Council register of proposed and decided works
A planning application is a request to the local planning authority for permission to build or alter. The authority publishes every application, its documents and its decision on a public planning register. This report reads that register for this address and for the surrounding neighbourhood. All four UK nations run their own planning system, and every authority keeps a register.
What This Means
This is a record of past decisions, not a rule you have to follow. It shows what previous owners asked to do here, and what the council allowed or refused. A refusal is the most useful entry: it tells you what this authority would not accept here. Nearby applications show what may be built around this property. An empty record is an absence of records, not proof that the house is unaltered. This is one of the few things on this report that lenders and insurers price directly: an extension with no permission on record normally needs indemnity insurance before a lender will complete.
Practical Advice
- Ask your conveyancer to check that every extension, loft conversion and outbuilding here holds a building regulations completion certificate.
- Ask the seller's solicitor for the decision notice and approved drawings behind any application listed at this address.
- Ask your conveyancer to order the official local authority search, LLC1 and CON29, for the council's formal answer.
- Read the case officer's report on any pending application near this property, published on the council's portal.
- Ask a planning consultant about a certificate of lawfulness where works are old enough to be beyond enforcement.
Key Points
- A council aims to decide a householder application in eight weeks and a major scheme in thirteen, counted from the date it validates the application rather than the date of submission.
- The report treats an application within 25 metres of the property centre as this address's own, and searches roughly one kilometre around it for nearby activity.
- Around one authority in eight publishes a register the search cannot place on a map, so an empty result there means unknown rather than none.
Additional Information
In England the council has ten years to act against unauthorised building work completed since 25 April 2024. Anything finished earlier keeps the old four-year limit. Wales and Scotland still apply four years; Northern Ireland allows five. The linked register search covers England and Wales.