Breach of condition notice: no appeal, and what to do

 

A breach of condition notice is the council’s way of dealing with one narrow problem: you have planning permission, but you have not done what one of its conditions told you to do. Maybe the landscaping was never planted, the parking spaces were never marked out, or you are opening earlier than the hours you agreed.

It is a short, blunt document. It names the condition, tells you what to do about it, and gives you a deadline of at least 28 days.

Here is the part that catches almost everyone out. There is no statutory right of appeal against a breach of condition notice. Not to the Planning Inspectorate or another appeal body. A challenge to the legality of the notice itself is by judicial review in the High Court, which is a different and much narrower route. You cannot argue that the condition is unfair, or that your development is fine really. If you ignore the notice you commit a criminal offence, and in England the fine is now unlimited.

That single fact changes what you should do next, and it is why this notice deserves a page of its own. The question is never “shall I appeal”. It is “can I comply, and if not, what else is open to me”.

This page covers England. Wales works the same way but the penalty is different, and we set that out below. It sits inside our wider guide to planning enforcement.

Whilst we are happy to give you some help via this page, it is often easier to consult a professional. If in doubt – STOP – and reach out to us. We are here to help. Contact us here. 

 

 

What a breach of condition notice actually is

 

The power sits in section 187A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It only applies where planning permission was granted subject to conditions, and one of those conditions has not been complied with.

That is worth pausing on. A breach of condition notice is not for unauthorised building work, and not for a change of use you never had permission for. Those need an enforcement notice, which unlike this one can be appealed on any of the enforcement appeal grounds. This notice is only ever about a condition attached to a permission you already hold.

One useful wrinkle: the law says “conditions” includes limitations. So the built-in limits on permitted development rights, the ones that let you build something without applying, can be enforced this way too.

The notice has to spell out the steps the council thinks you should take, or the activities it thinks should stop, to put the condition right. A vague notice is a weak notice.

 

Who can be served with one

 

The council can serve it on either:

• anyone who is carrying out, or has carried out, the development
• anyone who has control of the land

Whoever it lands on becomes “the person responsible”. That is simply the person served, and it is the person who can be prosecuted.

There is a limit on the second route. If you are served purely because you control the land, the only conditions the council can put in the notice are ones regulating the use of the land. It cannot make a landowner carry out building works someone else was supposed to do.

 

How long you get

 

The notice must give you at least 28 days, counted from the day it was served. The council can specify longer, and it can extend the period later by serving a further notice, but it can never give you less than 28 days.

The council can also withdraw the notice. Be careful reading too much into that, because withdrawing it does not stop the council serving a fresh one for the same condition, or for different conditions, later on.

You are in breach once the period has run out and both of these are still true: the condition has not been complied with, and the steps set out in the notice have not been taken. At that point you have committed an offence.

 

The fine, and why other websites get this wrong

 

This is the most miscited figure in planning enforcement, so it is worth being precise. The maximum penalty has changed twice, and most pages you will find are quoting one of the old ones.

• until 5 April 2012, a fine capped at level 3, which is £1,000
• from 6 April 2012 to 24 April 2024, level 4 in England, which is £2,500, and level 3 in Wales
• from 25 April 2024 in England, simply “a fine”, with no cap at all

So in England today the fine is unlimited. Not £1,000, not £2,500. A magistrate can fine you whatever the case warrants. The change was made by section 120 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 and it applies only to offences committed after 25 April 2024.

There is a second sting. The offence can be charged again by reference to any later period of time. Comply late and you deal with one prosecution; carry on ignoring the notice and the council can come back and prosecute you again for the period since the last conviction. It is not a one-off fine you can simply absorb as a cost.

 

The two defences the law gives you

 

If you are prosecuted, section 187A gives you exactly two defences, and you have to prove them rather than merely raise them:

• that you took all reasonable measures to comply with the conditions in the notice
• that you no longer had control of the land, but only if you were served as someone controlling the land in the first place

“All reasonable measures” is a genuine defence, not a formality. It is about what you actually did, not what you intended. Someone who contacted the council, got quotes, booked the work in and was held up by something outside their control is in a very different position from someone who put the letter in a drawer. If you cannot meet the deadline, start creating that paper trail now, because it is the evidence you will need later.

Note what is not a defence: that the condition is unreasonable, that the development is harmless, or that the council is being heavy-handed. Those are planning arguments, and a criminal court is not where they get heard.

 

No appeal, so what can you actually do

 

You have three realistic routes, and the first is usually the right one.

Comply. Unglamorous, but it ends the matter. If you can do what the notice asks within the period, do it, and tell the council in writing when you have. Be aware that complying here gains you nothing beyond ending the breach. With an enforcement notice, under-enforcement can leave you holding permission for whatever the notice did not require you to remove. A breach of condition notice carries no such rule.

Apply to change the condition. If the condition itself is the problem, you can apply under section 73 to vary or remove it. That application does get a proper decision, and if it is refused you can appeal that refusal in the normal way. This is the closest thing to an appeal that exists here, and it is badly underused. See our guide to a section 73 amendment. Do be aware that applying does not pause the notice, so the deadline keeps running while the council considers it, and if the council has also issued an enforcement notice it may refuse to deal with a retrospective application at all.

Judicial review. If the notice is legally defective, served on the wrong person, or the council acted improperly in issuing it, the High Court is the only forum. It looks at whether the decision was lawful, not whether it was a good idea. The time limits are short and it is not cheap, so take advice early. See judicial review and section 288 challenges.

 

Should you fight this at all?

 

Often, no. Conditions get breached by accident far more often than by design, and a lot of breach of condition notices are answered best by simply doing the thing.

Ask yourself what compliance actually costs. If the condition requires planting a hedge, marking out bays or submitting a drawing you forgot about, the cost of complying is almost always less than the cost of a prosecution, let alone repeated ones. If compliance would genuinely wreck the way you use the property, that is when the section 73 route earns its keep, and when advice is worth paying for.

The one thing that never works is doing nothing and hoping. There is no appeal to buy you time, and the clock does not stop.

 

When it arrives with an enforcement notice

 

The two can be served together, and councils sometimes do exactly that deliberately.

Here is why it matters. When you appeal an enforcement notice, that notice is suspended until the appeal is decided, which can take many months. A breach of condition notice has no appeal, so nothing suspends it. Serving both lets the council keep the pressure on over the conditions while the enforcement notice appeal grinds through.

So if you have received both, do not assume that appealing the enforcement notice protects you. It does not touch the breach of condition notice, and you can still be prosecuted for that while the appeal is live.

Serving a breach of condition notice also counts as taking enforcement action, which matters for the deadlines the council has to work within. Those are set out on our page about enforcement time limits. It is worth checking, because a condition breached long enough ago may be beyond the council’s reach entirely. You may also want to read about the enforcement warning notice, a gentler step where the council invites an application instead, and about stop notices, which halt an activity quickly.

 

Is there a cost?

 

There is no fee to be served with a breach of condition notice. The council issues it; you do not apply for anything, so nothing is payable to receive one.

The costs that do arise are these: the price of actually complying, which is the one people forget to work out; the application fee if you go down the section 73 route to change the condition; and legal costs if it reaches court. Fees change and vary, so check current figures on our planning application fees page rather than relying on a number you read somewhere.

 

What about Wales?

 

The notice itself works the same way in Wales. Same power, same 28-day minimum, same absence of any appeal, same two defences.

The difference is the penalty. In Wales the maximum fine is still capped at level 3, currently £1,000. England removed its cap in April 2024 and Wales did not.

 

See also our guide to retrospective planning permission if what you are dealing with is unauthorised development rather than a broken condition.

Breach of condition notice relevant legislation

The primary sources below are on legislation.gov.uk. Check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each page for any amendments not yet incorporated into the revised text.

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s187A: breach of condition notices, the 28 day minimum, the offence and the defences
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s171A: serving a breach of condition notice counts as taking enforcement action
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s171B: the time limits for taking enforcement action
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s73: applying to vary or remove a condition
• Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, s120: removed the cap on the England fine
• SI 2024/452, reg 9: the new penalty applies only to offences committed after 25 April 2024

Other Enforcement Sections

 

 

 

Breach of Condition Notice Page Updated: 22nd August 2026