Section 73 Amendment

Contents

A Section 73 amendment lets you apply to vary or remove a condition on a planning permission that has already been granted. It is the workhorse of the planning system for changing an approved scheme, and it is far more powerful than most people expect. It is also narrower in one specific respect than most people expect, and that catch has generated a decade of litigation. One practical example is an application to remove or vary an agricultural or rural-worker occupancy condition, although the evidence needed will depend heavily on the wording of the condition and the local development plan.

This page covers what a Section 73 application can do, the one thing it cannot do, how the courts have settled its limits, what it costs and how long it takes, and when you would be better off with a different application altogether. If you would like help with an application, please make contact.

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What is a Section 73 amendment?

The power sits in Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It allows an application for planning permission for the development of land without complying with conditions attached to a previous permission. The local planning authority considers only the question of the conditions. It can grant permission subject to different conditions, or unconditionally, or it can refuse and leave the original conditions in place.

You will often see a Section 73 application called a “minor material amendment”. That label comes from government guidance rather than from the Act, and it is misleading. Nothing in the legislation restricts Section 73 to minor changes.

Because the application is tied to conditions, the reach of Section 73 depends entirely on what was conditioned in the first place. If the approved plans are listed in a condition, and they almost always are, then the layout, the materials, the fenestration, the parking arrangement and much else can all be revisited through a Section 73. If something was never conditioned, there is no condition to vary and Section 73 has no purchase on it.

The one thing Section 73 cannot do

A Section 73 amendment cannot change the description of the development on the decision notice. That is the operative part of the permission and it is fixed.

This was settled by the Court of Appeal in Finney v Welsh Ministers [2019] EWCA Civ 1868. The developer had permission for a wind turbine described as having a tip height of 100 metres and used Section 73 to increase it to 125 metres. The court held that this was not open to the decision-maker: a Section 73 permission must authorise the same development, subject to different conditions. Although Finney was a Welsh case, it is Court of Appeal authority and binds decision-makers in England.

The practical lesson is one about drafting. The more detail you volunteer in the description of development on your original application, the less room you leave yourself to amend later. Keep the description of development as economical as the proposal honestly allows. A planning authority should not alter that description without your agreement.

How far can a Section 73 go? Armstrong and Fiske

Two cases have defined the modern boundaries, and they need reading together.

In Armstrong v Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities [2023] EWHC 176 (Admin) the High Court held that Section 73 is not limited to minor material amendments. The judge was blunt that the guidance had introduced an impermissible gloss on the statute, and quashed a decision where an inspector had refused a change of house design simply because it was not minor.

The Court of Appeal then settled the position in Test Valley Borough Council v Fiske [2024] EWCA Civ 1541. There is no free-standing rule that a Section 73 cannot make a fundamental alteration. The real limits are the two that flow from Finney: a Section 73 permission cannot change the operative part of the original permission, and a condition imposed under Section 73 cannot be inconsistent with that operative part. Subject to those limits, conditions can effect substantial change. The Supreme Court refused permission to appeal, so this is settled law.

Put plainly: the test is not how big the change is. The test is whether the change can be delivered through the conditions without contradicting what the permission says it authorises.

Section 73B is not yet available

Section 110 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 inserts a new Section 73B into the 1990 Act. It would allow an application for a permission that is not substantially different in effect from an existing one, and, unlike Section 73, it would be able to alter the description of the development. It is designed to fill precisely the gap that Finney exposed.

Section 73B is not in force. As at the date at the foot of this page it has never been commenced, and it needs both a commencement order and a development order setting out how applications are to be made before it can operate. No date has been announced. Until that happens, Section 73 and Section 96A remain the only amendment routes, and a change to the description of development still requires a fresh application. Treat any advice that offers you a Section 73B application today with caution.

What a Section 73 permission actually gives you

A grant under Section 73 is a new, free-standing planning permission. It sits alongside the original, which survives unamended, and you choose which one to implement. It does not extend your time limits: the new permission expires on the same date as the original, because Section 73(5) prevents a grant that would extend the time for starting development or for applying for approval of reserved matters.

London Borough of Lambeth v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2019] UKSC 33 is a useful reminder of what that means in practice. A Section 73 decision creates a new alternative permission; it does not literally rewrite the original permission. The Supreme Court also stressed that, as a matter of good practice, the conditions intended to govern the new permission should be restated clearly rather than left to a chain of cross-references or implication.

Lambeth also considered what happens to earlier conditions which are not repeated. The Court’s view on that point was expressly provisional because it had not heard full argument, but it considered that an earlier condition which had already taken effect could continue to bind where the later permission neither displaced it nor authorised anything inconsistent with it. That is another reason to read the planning history as a whole rather than assuming that an omitted condition has automatically vanished.

Two further limits are worth knowing:

Section 73 does not apply at all where the previous permission was subject to a time limit condition and that time has expired without development having begun
where several permissions overlap on one site, the principle confirmed by the Supreme Court in Hillside Parks Ltd v Snowdonia National Park Authority [2022] UKSC 30 can bite: if what you build makes it physically impossible to carry out an earlier permission across the whole of its site, that earlier permission can no longer lawfully be implemented

The original permission must have been lawfully implemented or still capable of implementation. If you need the scheme to be under way, see our page on how to make planning extant.

A red-line boundary is not subject to an express section 73 prohibition equivalent to the rule against changing the description of development. Where the location or red-line plan is incorporated through a condition, section 73 may in principle be used to substitute that plan, provided the resulting permission remains for the same development described in the operative part and the new condition is one that could lawfully have been imposed. Armstrong v Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities [2023] EWHC 176 (Admin) confirms that section 73 is not limited to minor material changes simply because a revised conditioned plan produces a substantial difference. That does not make every red-line change lawful: adding or removing land may create an inconsistency with the operative permission or other legal and practical problems, and some authorities still take a more restrictive approach. If the development itself needs to be re-described, a fresh application is required.

Should you use a Section 73 at all?

Often the answer is no, and it is worth pausing before you apply.

if the change is genuinely trivial, a non-material amendment under Section 96A is quicker and cheaper, and it amends the original permission rather than creating a second one
if the change would alter the description of development, Section 73 cannot deliver it. A Section 96A application to adjust the description first, where the change is genuinely non-material, followed by a Section 73, sometimes works. Otherwise you need a fresh application
if the change cannot be traced to any condition, Section 73 is the wrong tool and a fresh application is the answer
if your permission is close to expiry, remember that a Section 73 buys you no extra time
if the policy background has moved against you since the original grant, opening the scheme up invites the authority to look again at the conditions, and you may not like where that lands

That last point deserves weight. A Section 73 is not a rubber stamp on a change you have already decided to make. It is a fresh planning judgement on the conditions, and the authority can impose different ones.

Time, cost and refusal

A Section 73 application should be determined in eight weeks, or thirteen weeks where the original application was a major one. Our page on planning timescales sets out how those periods work, and you can agree a longer period in writing with the authority.

There is a fee, and since April 2025 it has been tiered, with separate rates for householder applications, major development and everything else. Fees are reviewed annually. We do not quote figures here because they change and because reforms under the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 will eventually allow authorities to set their own. Check the current position on our planning fees page. Note that fees rise substantially on 8th December 2026, and the increase for Section 73 applications on major development is one of the steepest in the package, so the timing of an application matters. See our news item on the December 2026 fee changes for the detail.

If your Section 73 application is refused, or the authority fails to determine it, you can appeal under Section 78 of the 1990 Act. The deadline is twelve weeks for a householder application and six months for everything else. Note that the written representations procedure changed on 1st April 2026, and the trigger is the date the underlying application was submitted rather than the date you lodge the appeal. For applications submitted on or after that date, most appeals are decided on the material that was already before the authority, with little scope to introduce new evidence. That makes it more important than ever to put your full case in at application stage. See our guide to planning appeals, and our page on appeal timescales, which sets out the deadline for each type of application.

For a listed building, the equivalent power to vary or discharge a condition is Section 19 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, which amends the original consent rather than creating a new one. We cover that on our page about varying or discharging listed building consent conditions. There is no Section 73B equivalent for listed building consent.

If you would like a consultant to handle a Section 73 application, fill in the fee proposal form and we will do the rest.

See also our guide to the types of planning application.