Retrospective Planning Permission

 

If you have already built something, or changed how land or a building is used, without the permission it needed, you can usually apply for that permission after the event. That is retrospective planning permission. It is an ordinary planning application, on the ordinary form, for something that already exists.

Here is the part almost nobody is told: you get one chance to put it right, and using it badly can leave you worse off than doing nothing. Apply, lose, and if the council issues an enforcement notice soon afterwards you can lose the right to argue the planning merits at appeal altogether. That is a real risk, not a technicality, and it is the reason this page spends as much time on whether to apply as on how.

Applying does not make anything lawful by itself. Nothing changes until permission is actually granted. The council judges the scheme on its merits exactly as it would have done beforehand, it can refuse, and in some situations it can decline to deal with your application at all.

 

 

 

 

When you can apply after the event

 

Section 73A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 lets a council grant planning permission for development that has already been carried out. There is also a fourth route, where a permission of this kind arises automatically and nobody applies for anything, known as under-enforcement. The three situations where you do apply are:

• work carried out without the permission it needed
• work carried out under a permission that only lasted for a set period, which you now want to keep for good
• work carried out without keeping to a condition on an earlier permission

There is no special “retrospective planning permission” application form. You use the ordinary one and make clear the work is already done.

One useful feature is easy to miss. Where permission is granted after the event, it can be made to take effect from the date the work was actually carried out, rather than from the date of the decision. Where the work was done under a permission that only ran for a set period, it dates back to the end of that period instead. Either way it matters, because it closes the gap during which the development was unlawful instead of leaving one behind.

 

You only get one chance to put it right

 

There are two ways to regularise unauthorised development. You can apply for retrospective planning permission. Or, if the council issues an enforcement notice, you can appeal that notice on the ground that permission ought to be granted.

Usually you cannot do both. They are two doors into the same room, and going through one shuts the other for a while. How long is set out in the next section, and it matters more than people expect. So the question is not just whether your scheme is acceptable, it is which route gives you the better hearing, and that depends on your case.

Broadly: applying first is quicker, cheaper and keeps things informal, and it suits development that is genuinely likely to be acceptable. Waiting for a notice and appealing gives you an Inspector rather than a planning officer, and more room to argue, but you only get that if a notice is actually issued, and living under the threat of one is uncomfortable and can affect a sale or a mortgage.

 

How applying and losing can close the better door

 

This is the trap, and it applies to land in England.

If you make a related application for planning permission, and the council then issues an enforcement notice covering the same thing, you cannot appeal that notice on the ground that permission ought to be granted. An application is “related” if granting it would have covered the matters the notice complains about. It can be for more than the notice covers and still count.

The block bites from the moment you make the application, not from the moment it is refused. So a notice issued while your application is still sitting undetermined has the same effect.

The block does not last forever. It falls away once your application has finished being considered and more than two years have passed since it finished. Issue the notice inside that two year window and you lose the ground of appeal. Issue it afterwards and you do not.

Working out when your application “finished” is not simply the date on the decision letter. Where you were refused and did not appeal, the clock starts on the day your right of appeal arose. Where the council never determined it and you did not appeal, it starts the day after the period they had ran out. Where you did appeal, it starts on the day the appeal was dismissed or determined. Those dates can differ by weeks, and weeks matter when the whole question is whether a notice landed inside two years.

There is one important let-out. If the council refused to determine your application rather than deciding it, that application is ignored for this purpose. So being turned away at the door does not burn your appeal right. That is a genuinely useful point and it is rarely explained.

Submitting a retrospective application regularises nothing until permission is actually granted. If the council refuses, the development remains a breach and the council can still enforce. If it grants permission, the development has exactly the same status as if permission had been obtained in advance.

 

What it costs, and the myth about paying extra

 

You will hear that retrospective applications cost more. In England they do not. The fee is the fee you would have paid had you applied before you started. There is no penalty rate and no surcharge.

The belief is not invented, it is just imported. In Scotland councils can add a surcharge of up to a quarter on a retrospective application, and many do. That rule has never applied in England.

Fees change, so we do not print figures here. Our planning application fees page has the current position. Budget for drawings too, and possibly for someone to prepare the application, which is usually the larger part of the bill.

 

The levy trap that costs the most

 

If your council charges the Community Infrastructure Levy, this is the most expensive thing on this page and the least written about.

Permission granted after the event does not qualify for any relief or exemption, apart from the one for minor development. That includes relief or an exemption you had already been granted on an earlier permission. So a self-build exemption, or social housing relief, can simply be lost because the work went ahead before the paperwork.

The sums involved can dwarf the application fee and the cost of putting the building right. Check the levy position before you decide how to fix a breach, not afterwards.

 

Biodiversity net gain and retrospective applications

 

Most planning permissions in England now carry a biodiversity net gain condition. The site has to be left at least 10% better for wildlife than you found it, and kept that way for 30 years. It is measured, it is tied down by a legal agreement, and it costs real money.

Retrospective planning permission is exempt. Biodiversity net gain has never been applied to permission granted after the event under section 73A, so there is no gain plan to submit and no 10% to find. Ministers have the power to change that and have not used it, so treat this as the position now rather than forever.

Our biodiversity net gain page explains who else is exempt, and what changed on 6th August 2026.

 

When the council can refuse to deal with your application

 

Under section 70C of the same Act, a council may decline to determine a retrospective application where granting it would mean granting permission for something already covered by an enforcement notice issued before the application arrived.

The point of the power is to stop the same development being argued in two places at once, and to stop repeated applications being used to delay enforcement. If the council does decline, there is no appeal, because there is no decision to appeal against. The way to get the planning merits looked at is then the enforcement notice appeal.

 

If your application is refused

 

A refusal carries the ordinary right of appeal. Our planning appeals page explains the process, and our appeal timescales page sets out the deadline for each type of application, with householder appeals in particular running out far sooner than people expect.

Before you appeal, read the one chance section above again. The interaction between a refused application and an enforcement notice issued shortly afterwards is where people lose rights without noticing.

 

Retrospective planning permission, or a certificate?

 

These two get confused constantly, and picking the wrong one wastes money.

Retrospective planning permission is for development that still needs permission. A lawful development certificate is different: it confirms that what exists is already lawful, because it was permitted development, or never needed permission, or has been there long enough that the council can no longer act.

If your development is already beyond the reach of enforcement, you want a certificate. Applying for permission you do not need invites scrutiny you did not have to face.

 

Is it too late for the council to act?

 

Enforcement is time limited. In England the limit is now ten years for breaches, with a four year rule surviving in narrow transitional cases and in Wales. Once the period has run without action, the development is immune and a certificate is the right route.

The detail decides real cases, so we keep it on one page: see our guide to enforcement time limits.

 

Things people get wrong

 

• applying does not pause or cancel an enforcement notice; the notice runs to its own timetable unless it is appealed
• a council can invite you to apply, and often will, but it cannot promise the outcome and can still enforce over other parts of what you have done
• where the breach is a condition rather than the building itself, a section 73 application may be the better route; the two overlap
• unauthorised work to a listed building cannot be regularised this way; you can apply for listed building consent after the event, but unlike planning permission it cannot be back-dated, and doing the work without it is a criminal offence
• if the council has sent you a notice inviting an application rather than an enforcement notice, read our enforcement warning notice page before you respond

 

If you have been contacted about unauthorised development, our someone reported me to planning enforcement page sets out what usually happens next.

 

See also our guide to the types of planning application.

Relevant legislation

Planning law changes often. You can check the current wording below on the official legislation.gov.uk website. The “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each page flags anything not yet applied to the published text:

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 73A – planning permission for development already carried out
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 70C – power to decline to determine a retrospective application
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 174 – appeal against an enforcement notice, including the restriction on the permission ground
• Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, Part 3 Chapter 5 – rewrote the enforcement time limits and the restriction on appeals
• Planning and Compensation Act 1991 – inserted section 73A, in force 2 January 1992
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, Schedule 7A – biodiversity net gain, which has never been switched on for section 73A permissions
• The Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 – the levy, including the rules on relief and exemptions

Other Planning Application Sections

 

 

 

Retrospective Planning Permission Page Updated: 12th August 2026