Discharge of Conditions

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Planning permission is rarely the end of the process. Most permissions come with conditions, and many of those require you to submit something to the council and get it agreed before you can start, or before you can occupy. Getting that agreement is what discharging conditions means. It is the stage that quietly kills more schemes than refusals do, because people treat it as paperwork and discover too late that a start made without it was not a lawful start at all.

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What is discharge of conditions?

When a council grants planning permission it can impose conditions. Some are simply things you must do or not do. Others require the council’s consent, agreement or approval to some matter, such as a materials schedule, a drainage strategy or a construction management plan, before work starts, or before a stage is reached, or before occupation.

Those are the conditions you discharge. You apply to the council under article 27 of the Development Management Procedure Order, in writing, identifying the permission and including whatever particulars, plans and drawings are needed to deal with it.

It is not a planning application in the usual sense. The council is not revisiting whether the development should happen, as that was settled. It is deciding whether what you have submitted satisfies the condition.

Full or householder: is the process different?

No. The same route applies whether your permission was a full application or a householder application: the same article 27 application, the same eight weeks, the same deemed discharge provisions, the same appeal route.

The difference is the fee, which is lower for a condition on a householder permission than for anything else. Usefully, the fee is charged per request rather than per condition, so several conditions submitted together cost the same as one. See our guide to planning fees in England for the current figures, and group your conditions where you sensibly can.

Discharge of conditions is one of the categories rising most steeply on 8th December 2026, so if you are close to applying it is worth checking the timing. The government considered charging per condition rather than per request and decided against it for now, so the grouping advice above still holds. Our news item on the December 2026 fee changes sets out what is happening.

The eight week rule

The council must give you notice of its decision within 8 weeks, beginning with the day immediately following the day it received the application, or any longer period you agree in writing.

Eight weeks is the statutory position. Plan for longer. Discharge applications sit low in most authorities’ priorities, and the practical advice is to allow twelve to sixteen weeks and to start the moment permission is granted rather than when you want to break ground.

It is the applicant’s responsibility to discharge conditions. Nobody will chase you, and nobody will warn you that your start is unlawful.

Pre-commencement conditions: the trap

A pre-commencement condition must be discharged before you begin. This is not a technicality. Work carried out in breach of a condition precedent may not count as a lawful start at all, which means the operation you were relying on to make your permission extant may not have made it extant, and if the three years then run out, the permission is gone.

People lose permissions this way. They dig the foundations at month 34, believe the scheme is safe, and discover that an undischarged pre-commencement condition means nothing they did counted.

There is some protection at the front end. Since 2018, a council cannot grant permission subject to a pre-commencement condition without the applicant’s written agreement to the terms of that condition, with exceptions, including conditions on an outline permission and the circumstances set out in regulations. If the council cannot get your agreement it can serve a notice, and the application cannot be determined until that period expires unless you respond.

So read pre-commencement conditions before you agree to them, not after. It is far easier to negotiate a condition out at that stage than to discharge it later.

Deemed discharge: when the council does not respond

If the council sits on your application, you are not powerless. Section 74A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, introduced by the Infrastructure Act 2015, lets a condition be treated as discharged where the council has failed to decide, explained in full on our deemed discharge of conditions page. The mechanics are in articles 27 to 30 of the Development Management Procedure Order.

How it works:

you must first have applied under article 27
once 6 weeks have elapsed, beginning with the day after the council received that application, you may serve a deemed discharge notice, or sooner, if the council agrees a shorter period in writing
the notice must identify the condition and give details of your application, specify the date the deemed discharge is to take effect, and, where the eight weeks has already passed, confirm you have not appealed for non-determination
the date you specify must be the later of the end of the eight week determination period, or 14 days after the day following the council’s receipt of your notice

If that date arrives and the council still has not told you its decision, the condition is deemed discharged, and the council’s approval is treated as given.

Two practical points. If you agreed a longer determination period than eight weeks, deemed discharge cannot take effect before that longer period has run. And you cannot use deemed discharge if you have already appealed against non-determination, as it is one route or the other, not both.

When deemed discharge is not available

The exclusions are wide, and they cover most of the conditions people actually struggle with. Deemed discharge does not apply where:

the condition falls within the exemptions in Schedule 6 to the Development Management Procedure Order, which include conditions relating to environmental impact assessment development, flood risk, contaminated land, sites of special scientific interest, archaeology, highways matters, and conditions requiring a planning obligation to be entered into
the permission was granted before 15th April 2015
you and the council agreed in writing that section 74A would not apply
the matter is a reserved matters submission, as those follow their own route, see our guide to reserved matters
the condition relates to a biodiversity gain plan, as the gain plan has its own regime and must be approved before development can lawfully begin

The pattern is clear enough: the more technical or contentious the condition, the less likely deemed discharge is to help. For a materials schedule it is a useful lever. For contaminated land, it is not available at all, and there an appeal is the only route if the council will not decide.

If the council refuses, or will not decide

There is a right of appeal where a discharge application is refused, or is not determined within the statutory timescale. It goes to the Planning Inspectorate in the usual way, so see our guide to planning appeals and timescales.

Weigh it against deemed discharge where that is available: deemed discharge is faster and free, but only works for conditions outside Schedule 6, and only if the council has genuinely gone silent. An appeal works for anything, but takes months you may not have.

Do not confuse discharging a condition with challenging one. If the condition itself is unreasonable, that is a different problem with different tools: a section 73 application to vary or remove it, a section 96A non-material amendment for the trivial, or an appeal against the condition. Note the risk in that last route: on an appeal against a condition, the Inspector re-determines the whole application, not just the condition, so a bad condition can, rarely, become no permission at all.

What happens if you just ignore a condition?

Development taken forward in breach of a condition may attract enforcement action. Beyond that, the practical consequences bite quietly: a breach can undermine a lawful start, complicate a sale, and turn up in due diligence years later when you have forgotten it.

If you have already built in breach, an application for retrospective planning permission under section 73A may be available. But that is a rescue, not a plan.

Practical points

read every condition the day permission is granted, and list which need discharging before a start
apply early; the statutory eight weeks is a floor, not a forecast
group conditions into one application where you can; the fee is per request, not per condition
never treat a pre-commencement condition as a formality; an unlawful start can cost you the permission
check Schedule 6 before relying on deemed discharge; the conditions that cause delay are often the ones it excludes
keep the discharge decision notices; a buyer’s solicitor will ask for them

See also our guide to the types of planning application.