Minor commercial appeal: does your business count, and how long have you got?

If the council has refused a planning application for your shop, cafe, pub or takeaway, you may have far less time to appeal than you think. A minor commercial appeal has to be lodged within 12 weeks, not the six months that most refusals get. Miss that date and the right to appeal is gone, however good your case was.

The awkward part is that whether your case counts is decided by a list of use classes that was scrapped back in 2020. The law froze that old list in place for this one purpose, so the answer turns on what your premises would have been called then, not what they are called now.

What counts as a minor commercial appeal

Your application has to be about an existing building, or part of one, that is already in use as a shop, a place selling financial or professional services, a restaurant or cafe, a pub or bar, or a hot food takeaway.

Then all four of these have to be true as well. The application does not involve a change of use. It does not change the number of units in the building. The work is wholly at ground floor level. And it does not increase the floor area of the building.

Fail any one of those four and you are not on the 12 week clock at all. You are on the ordinary one, which is longer.

Why use classes from 2020 still decide it

In September 2020 the government swept most shops, offices, cafes and gyms into one broad commercial class. Pubs and takeaways were pushed out on their own instead.

That change did not reach this rule. To work out whether an appeal is a minor commercial one, the law still reads the old list as it stood on 31 August 2020. So the question is not which class your premises sit in today. It is which one they would have sat in then.

That produces one result which catches people out. A pub or a hot food takeaway still counts, even though neither of them is in the main commercial class any more. If you run either, do not assume the shorter deadline passes you by.

There is no floor area limit in England

You may come across a 250 square metre threshold. That figure is Welsh and it does not apply here. In England there is no size limit at all, and the four conditions above are the whole test.

Should you appeal, or apply again?

An appeal cannot carry changes. The Inspector looks at the scheme the council actually refused, so if a modest alteration would answer the reasons you were given, applying again is usually quicker and more likely to succeed.

It is worth asking the case officer what would make the scheme acceptable before you commit to anything. Most refusals turn on detail rather than on principle.

The cost question usually decides it. A fresh application means paying an application fee again, and those fees are set nationally rather than by your council, so check our planning fees page before you choose. Against that, an appeal takes months and you cannot improve the scheme while it runs.

If you are not sure which deadline applies

Work out your date before you do anything else and treat it as immovable. The 12 weeks runs from the date on the decision notice, not from the day you got round to reading it. If there is any doubt about whether your case is a minor commercial one, assume the shorter deadline and work to that. Nothing is lost by appealing early, and everything is lost by appealing late.

When you get far less than 12 weeks

An enforcement notice changes everything. If the council has served one covering the same or substantially the same land and development, your deadline drops to 28 days. That applies where the notice was served no earlier than two years before you made the application, and it applies again, running from the day the notice was served, where the notice lands on or after the date of your decision.

So if there is an enforcement notice anywhere near your site, check the date on it before you rely on any other deadline on this page. Twelve weeks is not the floor. Twenty-eight days is.

When you get longer

If the council never decided your application at all, and you are appealing for that reason, you are not on the 12 week clock. The short deadline attaches to a decision, so an appeal against non-determination gives you six months instead. Our guide to non-determination appeals explains how that one works.

Our guide to appeal timescales sets out every deadline by application type and explains when the clock starts. For how the appeal itself is handled once it is in, see written representations appeals. If you have simply been refused and want to know what your options are, start with planning application refused.

Relevant legislation

Links below go to legislation.gov.uk. Check the Changes to Legislation panel at the top of each page, because amendments are not always applied to the text straight away.

• Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, article 2: the definition of a minor commercial application, and the four conditions
• The same Order, article 37: the 12 week deadline, the 28 day deadline where an enforcement notice is involved, and the six months that applies in every other case
• Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/757): regulation 5 freezes the use classes for this purpose as they stood on 31 August 2020, and regulation 7 shows which of the old classes moved into the broad commercial class
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 78: the right of appeal against refusal

Other Planning Appeal Sections

Minor Commercial Appeal Page Updated: 29th August 2026