Deemed discharge of conditions

When planning permission is granted with conditions, many of those conditions have to be formally “discharged” before you can build, or before you can occupy what you have built. You apply to the council, the council approves the details, and the condition is satisfied. The problem is delay: an application to discharge a condition can sit unanswered for months, holding up a site that already has permission.

Deemed discharge of conditions is the statutory answer to that delay. If the council fails to decide your discharge application in time, you can serve a notice that causes the condition to be treated as discharged, as though the council had given its approval. It is a genuine safety valve, but it is narrow, it has to be activated by you, and it does not apply to every condition.

This page explains how deemed discharge of conditions works, the exact notice timing that trips people up, and the conditions it cannot be used for. The ordinary route is covered on our discharge of conditions page; this page is specifically about what happens when the council does not respond.

Where deemed discharge comes from

The power sits in section 74A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which was inserted by the Infrastructure Act 2015. Section 74A does not set out the procedure itself; it allows the government to make the detailed rules by development order. Those rules are in the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 (the DMPO), at articles 27 to 30 and Schedule 6.

Two limits are built in from the start. First, this is an England-only provision. Second, it only applies where the application for the original planning permission was submitted after the DMPO came into force on 15 April 2015, so it does not reach back to older permissions.

How deemed discharge of conditions works, step by step

The key thing to understand is that deemed discharge does not happen automatically. The council missing its deadline is not enough on its own: you have to activate the process by serving a notice, and you cannot serve that notice too early. The sequence is:

• You apply to the council to discharge the condition, under article 27 of the DMPO, with the drawings, plans and particulars needed to deal with it
• The council has eight weeks from receiving your application to decide it, unless you and the council have agreed a longer period in writing
• Once at least six weeks have passed since the council received your application, you may serve a deemed discharge notice on the council (a shorter wait is possible only if the council agrees it in writing)
• The notice must give details of your application, identify the exact condition, confirm that you have not appealed, and specify the date on which deemed discharge is to take effect
• That effective date must be no earlier than the later of two things: the end of the eight-week determination period, or fourteen days after the council receives your notice

In practice this means the earliest a condition can actually be deemed discharged is a little over eight weeks from your original application. Get the notice date wrong and the discharge does not take effect, so the timing genuinely matters. If the council issues its decision before your notice date arrives, that decision stands and deemed discharge does not happen.

Deemed discharge of a condition means the council’s approval is treated as given

Section 74A puts the effect plainly: deemed discharge means the council’s consent, agreement or approval to the matter required by the condition is treated as having been given. So the condition is satisfied and no longer holds you up.

What it does not do is rewrite the condition or approve anything beyond it. You are treated as having the approval you applied for, on the details you submitted, and nothing more. If your submitted details were inadequate, deeming them approved does not make the underlying work compliant, and it does not stop the council taking enforcement action over a genuine breach of something else. As with the rest of the deemed consent family, a missed deadline settles the narrow point in front of the council, not the whole development.

The conditions you cannot use it for

Schedule 6 to the DMPO lists a substantial set of exemptions, and they cover exactly the conditions where a rushed, unexamined approval would carry real risk. Deemed discharge is not available where, in summary, the condition relates to matters such as:

• Development subject to environmental impact assessment
• Sites of special scientific interest, and habitats or species protection
• Contaminated land
• Flood risk, archaeology, and highways matters including where a section 106 or section 278 agreement is needed

The full list is in Schedule 6 itself, and it is worth checking against your specific condition before you rely on the route. Two other things sit outside the process entirely rather than in Schedule 6, because article 27 never brings them in: approval of reserved matters, which has its own route, and approval of a biodiversity gain plan. Deemed discharge is also unavailable where you and the council have agreed in writing that it will not apply, and it cannot be used at all once you have appealed the council’s non-determination.

Deemed discharge or appeal, not both

If the council does not decide your discharge application, you have a choice, and it is genuinely a choice between routes. You can serve a deemed discharge notice, or you can appeal the non-determination to the Planning Inspectorate, but you cannot pursue both for the same condition. The deemed discharge notice itself has to confirm that no appeal has been made. There is no separate cost to serving a deemed discharge notice, though your original discharge application will usually have carried a fee, set nationally, which our planning fees page explains. There is also a refund, and it runs separately. Under regulation 16(2) of the 2012 Fees Regulations, the fee must be refunded if the council has not decided your request within twelve weeks of receiving it. That gets your money back rather than discharging the condition, so the two routes sit side by side and you may end up using both. Agreeing a longer period with the council affects the deemed discharge timing, but regulation 16(2) carries no such exception for the refund. If a route to challenge is what you need, our planning appeals page covers non-determination appeals.

Should you rely on deemed discharge at all?

It is tempting to treat deemed discharge as a quick win against a slow council, but it rewards caution rather than speed. The exemptions in Schedule 6 remove exactly the conditions where getting it wrong is expensive, the notice timing is unforgiving, and a deemed discharge only ever confirms the details you actually submitted. Where a condition is straightforward and the council has simply gone quiet, it is a useful lever. Where the condition is sensitive, or your submitted details are thin, a short chase or a proper decision is usually safer than a deemed approval you may later have to defend. If in doubt, treat it as a fallback, not a first move.

Note that the position here is for England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland handle the discharge of conditions differently.

This is one of four senses of deemed consent. For the others, and how they differ, see our deemed consent overview.

See also our guide to the types of planning application.

Deemed discharge of conditions relevant legislation

The provisions below govern deemed discharge of conditions. Check the “Changes to Legislation” panel on each page on legislation.gov.uk, as this area has recent amendments.

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 74A: deemed discharge of planning conditions
• Development Management Procedure Order 2015, Part 5 (articles 27 to 30): the deemed discharge procedure
• Development Management Procedure Order 2015, Schedule 6: conditions exempt from deemed discharge
• Infrastructure Act 2015, section 29: the provision that inserted section 74A
• Fees Regulations 2012, regulation 16: the fee for confirming compliance with a condition, and the refund if it is not decided within twelve weeks

Deemed Discharge of Conditions Page Updated: 9th August 2026