Section 62A Applications

Where the government considers a council is not doing a good enough job of determining planning applications, it can designate that authority, putting it into what is commonly called special measures. Once designated, applicants get a choice they do not normally have: submit to the council as usual, or go over its head and apply directly to the Planning Inspectorate. That is a section 62A application. It sounds like a shortcut, and sometimes it is. But you give something significant up in exchange, and this page explains what.

A live example is now running in Potters Bar: S62A/2026/0159 at Maple House and Princes Parade is a 293-home scheme being determined directly by an Inspector rather than Hertsmere Borough Council.

 

 

 

What section 62A is

 

Section 1 of the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 inserted sections 62A and 62B into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, with effect from 1st October 2013. Section 62A allows applications for planning permission and reserved matters to be made directly to the Secretary of State where the local planning authority for the area has been designated for that purpose. In practice the Planning Inspectorate handles those applications on the Secretary of State’s behalf.

Two points shape everything else. First, designation gives the applicant an option, not an obligation, so you can still apply to the council in the ordinary way, and most applicants do. Second, it is a procedural alternative rather than a policy one: a section 62A application is still determined against the development plan and material considerations, with the council consulted. It is not a way around local policy.

 

How a council ends up designated

 

The Secretary of State can designate an authority where they consider there are respects in which it is not adequately performing its function of determining applications. Designation is assessed on two separate measures:

• speed: how quickly applications are determined
• quality: broadly, how often the authority’s decisions are overturned on appeal

The criteria are not in the Act. Section 62B requires the Secretary of State to lay a document before Parliament setting out the criteria for designation and de-designation, subject to a period in which either House may resolve against it. The most recent criteria document was laid on 4th December 2024. Following a 2024 consultation, the assessment period for the speed measure was reduced from two years to one, so that designation decisions rest on more current data.

An authority can be designated for major development, non-major development, or both, and the designation only opens the section 62A route for the category it covers. If a council is designated for non-major development only, applicants for major schemes still go to the council as normal.

Designations are not permanent. They remain in force until revoked, they are reviewed annually by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and they are lifted where performance improves, and several authorities have been de-designated in recent years.

 

Which councils are currently designated?

 

As at 21st August 2026, the following authorities are designated, and every current designation relates to applications for major development:

• Cherwell District Council
• Dacorum Borough Council
• Epping Forest District Council
• Hertsmere Borough Council
• Lewes District Council
• Malvern Hills District Council
• Rossendale Borough Council
• South Tyneside Council
• Staffordshire Moorlands District Council
• Wychavon District Council

Nine of those were designated together on 15th June 2026, on the quality measure. Lewes has been designated since May 2024.

This list will change, and probably sooner than you think. Designations are reviewed annually, councils are de-designated as performance improves, and others are added. Bristol was de-designated in January 2026, and Chorley, St Albans and Uttlesford in June 2025. Before you rely on the list above, check the current position against the government’s own page: Planning Applications (s62A) on gov.uk. Every designation and de-designation notice is published in the designation and de-designation collection.

 

When can you use section 62A?

 

Three things must line up. The council must be designated; your application must fall within the category the designation covers; and the application type must not be excluded.

Major (district) development takes its usual meaning: housing development of 10 or more dwellings, or on a site of 0.5 hectares or more where the number of dwellings is not known; buildings creating 1,000 square metres or more of floorspace; or development on a site of 1 hectare or more. Non-major development is simply development that does not meet any of those thresholds.

There is a third category. County matter development covers minerals, meaning the winning and working of minerals or the use of land for mineral-working deposits, and waste development. Unitary authorities are assessed separately for their district and their county matter applications, so a unitary can be designated for one and not the other.

Several application types cannot go to the Planning Inspectorate under section 62A, including:

• retrospective applications, where the development has already been carried out
• applications to vary or remove conditions
• householder applications

Timing matters too. If an authority is de-designated, applications already made under section 62A stay with the Planning Inspectorate and are determined there. But once de-designation takes effect you cannot make a new section 62A application, and that holds even if the Inspectorate has already given you pre-application advice on the scheme.

 

How a section 62A application works

 

The procedure is modelled on the ordinary development management process, with the Inspectorate standing in the council’s shoes. You can approach the Inspectorate for pre-application advice. Once an application is submitted, the council and statutory consultees are consulted, and at the end of the consultation period the Inspectorate decides the procedure.

Most applications for non-major development are dealt with by written representations. A hearing may be held where the scheme is of significant scale and raises issues that cannot be understood from the papers, but its purpose is for the Inspector to ask questions and hear oral representations, not to test evidence adversarially. There are no public inquiries in the section 62A process.

Fees are a question to settle early, since the application goes to the Inspectorate rather than the council, so check the current position with the Inspectorate, and see our guide to planning fees for what the equivalent application to the council would cost.

One practical warning from the government’s own procedural guidance: submit an application only when it is ready to be determined, because the decision will be made on the application as submitted. There is no equivalent of the negotiation and amendment that often happens with a council during the life of an application.

The Inspectorate issues a formal decision notice with reasons, and any conditions considered necessary. In exceptional cases the Secretary of State may recover a section 62A application so that it is decided by Ministers rather than an Inspector.

 

The trade-off: there is no appeal

 

This is the heart of it. There is no provision to appeal a section 62A decision, whatever the outcome, and no provision to appeal against conditions imposed on a permission granted under it either.

The only route of challenge is an application to the High Court under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, within six weeks of the decision. That is a challenge to the legality of the decision, not a re-run of the planning merits.

Compare that with the ordinary route. Apply to the council, get refused, and you have a full merits appeal to the Inspectorate, decided on written representations or, potentially, at a hearing or public inquiry, with evidence tested. Go down the section 62A road and you have one shot. If the Inspector refuses, that is the end of the matter short of a legal challenge.

So the choice is a genuine trade-off: a more predictable timetable, against the loss of the safety net.

 

What stays with the council

 

Designation does not remove the authority from the picture. Even where the Inspectorate grants permission under section 62A:

• the council remains responsible for monitoring implementation, and for checking the works accord with the approved plans and conditions
• applications to discharge details required by a condition go to the council
• applications to vary or remove conditions go to the council
• community infrastructure levy processes operate as if the council had made the decision

So a section 62A permission is a council-administered permission from the day it is granted. The Inspectorate’s involvement ends with the decision.

 

Is it worth it?

 

It depends on the scheme, and the honest answer is that it needs weighing case by case rather than treated as a free upgrade. Points that usually matter:

• how badly the council’s timescales would hurt the programme, set against the Inspectorate’s own workload
• how confident you are of approval, since the absence of an appeal makes a marginal scheme a much bigger gamble
• local political sensitivity, and whether being seen to bypass the council would harm community relations on this or future schemes
• whether the application is genuinely ready to be determined without negotiation

Section 62A rewards the well-prepared and the policy-compliant. For anything finely balanced, the ordinary route with an appeal in reserve is usually the safer bet.

See also our guide to the types of planning application.

 

 

Relevant legislation

 

Section 62A sits in the main planning Act, with the procedure in secondary legislation and the designation criteria in a document laid before Parliament. When checking any provision, use the “Changes to Legislation” panel on legislation.gov.uk, as later amendments are not always shown in the main text.

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 62A: applications made directly to the Secretary of State
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 62B: designation, and the criteria document laid before Parliament
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 288: the High Court challenge, the only route against a section 62A decision
• Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, section 1: inserted sections 62A and 62B
• Housing and Planning Act 2016, section 153: extended designation beyond major development
• Town and Country Planning (Section 62A Applications) (Written Representations and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2013: the procedure, and the definition of non-major development

Other Planning Application Sections

 

 

Section 62A Page Updated: 21st August 2026