Design and access statement: when is one required?

 

A design and access statement is a short document submitted with a planning application. It explains the design thinking behind a proposal and how people will reach and move around the finished development. In England the requirement comes from article 9 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, and it catches far fewer applications than most people assume.

A Design and Access Statement is not the same as a Planning Statement. The former explains design and access and is a statutory national requirement in specified cases; the latter makes the planning policy case and, under DM1 of the August 2026 NPPF, is expected for major development.

Only two categories of application need one as a matter of national law. Anything beyond that is the council asking under its local validation list, which is a different power with different limits. Knowing which of the two you are dealing with is what decides whether the council can lawfully refuse to register your application.

 

When is a design and access statement required?

 

Article 9(1) sets two triggers. An application needs a statement if it is for:

• major development, whatever and wherever it is
• development where any part of it is in a designated area, and it consists either of one or more dwellinghouses, or of a building or buildings creating 100 square metres or more of floor space

Major development is defined in article 2(1) of the same Order. It covers minerals working, waste development, ten or more dwellinghouses, a site of 0.5 hectares or more where the number of homes is not known, 1,000 square metres or more of new floor space, or a site of one hectare or more. Our page on whether you have a minor or major planning application works through the thresholds.

The second trigger sets a much lower bar, but only inside a designated area. A single new house, or a modest 100 square metre building, is enough.

 

What counts as a designated area

 

This is the point that catches people out. Article 9(5) defines a designated area exhaustively, and it means only two things:

• a conservation area
• a World Heritage Site

That is the entire list. A National Landscape, a National Park, the Green Belt, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an article 4 direction area all sit outside it. None of them triggers article 9.

 

Setting does not trigger a design and access statement

 

A number of widely circulated commercial guides state that a statement is needed where development would affect the setting of a designated heritage asset. That is wrong, and it is worth being clear about, because it leads people to commission documents they do not need.

Article 9(1)(b) asks a simple geographical question: is any part of the development in a conservation area or World Heritage Site? A site sitting next to a listed building, or across the road from a conservation area boundary, does not meet that test however severely it affects the setting.

Setting remains a genuine planning issue. It is dealt with through the National Planning Policy Framework and the statutory duties in the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. Where HE5 is engaged, the proposal should be accompanied by a proportionate Heritage Impact Assessment, including any contribution made by setting and the potential effect on significance. That is different from a design and access statement, even where the heritage assessment is incorporated within the same document.

 

When no statement is needed at all

 

Article 9(4) disapplies the requirement entirely for applications that are:

• made under section 73 to develop land without complying with a condition
• of the kind described in article 20(1)(b) or (c), being applications to replace a permission granted on or before 1 October 2010 whose time limit has not expired
• for engineering or mining operations
• for a material change in the use of land or buildings
• for waste development

There is an oddity worth noting. Minerals working and waste development both fall inside the definition of major development, so they trip the first trigger, and are then removed again by article 9(4). The result is that a large minerals or waste scheme needs no statement while a single house in a conservation area does.

The article 20 exclusion is close to a dead letter now, since it depends on a permission granted more than fifteen years ago whose time limit is somehow still running.

 

What a design and access statement must contain

 

Article 9(2) says the statement must be about the design principles and concepts applied to the development, and about how access issues have been dealt with. Article 9(3) then lists five things it must do:

• explain the design principles and concepts that have been applied
• demonstrate the steps taken to appraise the context of the development, and how the design takes that context into account
• explain the policy adopted as to access, and how access policies in the relevant plan documents have been taken into account
• state what consultation has been undertaken on access, and what account has been taken of the outcome
• explain how any specific issues that might affect access have been addressed

The third of those was widened on 25 March 2026. It previously referred only to local development documents. It now also covers documents forming part of minerals and waste plans, local plans and supplementary plans prepared by local planning authorities, minerals and waste planning authorities or the Mayor of London. The change arrived with the wider plan-making reforms that took effect on the same date.

 

Listed building consent has its own separate requirement

 

Do not read article 9 as covering listed building consent, because it does not. A separate statement is required for listed building consent applications under regulation 3A of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Regulations 1990, and its content is different. It addresses the special architectural or historic importance of the building, the physical features that justify its designation, and the building’s setting. Where the works affect only the interior, the access element falls away.

So setting does matter for a listed building consent statement, while playing no part in the article 9 trigger for planning permission. Conflating the two is the source of most of the confusion on this topic.

 

Regulation 3A was streamlined in 2013. A statement no longer has to explain the principles applied to the scale, layout and appearance of the works, and no longer has to explain how features ensuring access will be maintained. Agents working from older precedent documents routinely still include both.

 

When the council asks and the law does not

 

Councils routinely request a design and access statement on schemes falling outside article 9, through the local validation list. They can do that, within limits. A local list requirement must be reasonable and must relate to the particular application, and it cannot simply reinstate a national requirement that Parliament chose not to impose.

Our pages on what a council can lawfully ask for and on the validation dispute procedure explain how to push back where you think a request goes too far. If the council will not register the application without a statement, the validation dispute route is the mechanism, not an appeal.

 

What it costs and what happens if you get it wrong

 

There is no separate fee for a design and access statement. It is a document accompanying the application, and the only cost to you is whatever your agent or architect charges to write it. The application fee itself is unaffected, and current figures sit on our planning application fees page.

The real cost of getting it wrong is delay. Where the statement is missing and article 9 requires one, the application is not valid and the determination clock does not start. That can add weeks to a timetable for the sake of a document that might run to three or four pages.

There is no appeal against a council deciding your statement is inadequate, and none against the requirement itself. If the application is eventually refused, the ordinary route is a planning appeal, where the inspector considers the merits afresh. A thin statement is rarely the reason a scheme fails, but it does hand a council an easy first objection.

 

Keep it proportionate

 

A design and access statement is not a marketing brochure, and length is not quality. Article 9(3) asks five questions. Answering them clearly for a small scheme takes a few pages, not forty, and inspectors have never been impressed by bulk.

Before commissioning one, check whether you need it at all. If your scheme is not major development, and no part of it sits inside a conservation area or World Heritage Site, article 9 does not apply to you. If the council still asks, ask them which requirement they rely on and why it is reasonable for your application. That question alone resolves a good number of these requests.

 

See also our guide to the types of planning application.

 

Relevant legislation

 

The links below go to legislation.gov.uk. Check the Changes to Legislation panel on each page, as amendments are not always applied to the text straight away.

• Article 9, Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, the design and access statement requirement
• Article 20 of the same Order, referred to in the article 9(4)(b) exclusion
• Article 2 of the same Order, which defines major development
• The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (Local Planning) (Modification and Consequential Amendments) (England) Regulations 2026, which amended article 9(3)(c) on 25 March 2026
• The Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Regulations 1990, regulation 3A of which carries the separate listed building consent requirement, though only the original 1990 text is published, so regulation 3A has to be read together with the instruments below
• SI 2006/1063, which inserted regulation 3A, later amended by SI 2009/2262, SI 2010/2185 and SI 2013/1239

Other Planning Application Sections

 

Design and access statement Page Updated: 18th August 2026