Direct action: when the council does the work and bills you

 

Prosecution punishes you. It does not put the building back, take the caravan off the field or clear the yard. So the law gives councils a second and completely separate power, and it is the one that most often ends up costing the most money.

It is usually called direct action. If the steps an enforcement notice required have not been taken by the deadline, the council may come onto the land, do those steps itself, and send you the bill.

This page explains when that power arises, who ends up paying, how to try to pass the cost on to whoever actually caused the breach, and whether there is anything you can do to stop it. If you have not yet reached that stage, our page on what happens if you ignore an enforcement notice covers the prosecution side, which usually runs alongside this rather than instead of it.

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. 

 

When the power to take direct action arises

 

Three things have to be true before the council can do the work itself.

• an enforcement notice is in effect against the land
• the period the notice allowed for compliance has run out
• the steps the notice required have not been taken

Once those are satisfied, the council may enter the land, take those steps, and recover from the owner any expenses it reasonably incurred in doing so.

Notice what is not on that list. The council does not have to prosecute first. It does not have to warn you again. And it does not need your permission to come onto the land, which is the whole point of the power.

 

Direct action usually runs alongside a prosecution

 

People often assume they will be given a choice: pay a fine or have the work done. It is not a choice, and the two are not alternatives.

Being in breach of an enforcement notice is a criminal offence in its own right, and the fine for it has no upper limit. Direct action is a civil recovery of costs, sitting entirely separately. A council can prosecute you and do the work and send you the bill, and many do exactly that, because the prosecution deals with the wrongdoing and the direct action deals with the building. In the most serious cases it can ask a court for a planning injunction as well, which is a third power again.

 

Who actually gets the bill

 

The expenses are recovered from the person who is then the owner of the land, meaning the owner at the time the work is done.

Read that carefully if you are buying. It is not the person who built the thing. It is not necessarily the person who was served with the notice. If you complete a purchase and the council does the work the following month, the bill is yours.

This is the same trap that sits under the criminal offence. After the compliance period has ended, section 179 treats the person who is the owner at any later time while a required step remains outstanding, or a prohibited activity continues, as being in breach of the notice. Anyone buying a property with an unresolved enforcement notice on it can therefore take on both risks together, even if the original compliance deadline passed before the purchase.

 

Getting the money back from whoever caused it

 

There is a genuinely useful rule here, and it is one of the least known in enforcement.

Where a copy of an enforcement notice has been served, money the owner or occupier spends complying with it, and any sum the owner pays the council for work it did itself, is treated by law as having been spent for the use and at the request of the person who committed the breach of planning control.

In plain terms, the law treats that person as though they had asked you to spend it. If the previous owner built the extension, or a contractor did work they should never have done, that is your statutory footing for going after them. It is a civil claim, you will need a solicitor, and you will need to be able to identify and find them, but the basis is there rather than having to be invented.

The same idea appears in three other places in planning law, which is worth knowing if your problem is not an ordinary enforcement notice:

• untidy land, where the council cleans up under a section 215 notice
• protected trees, where the council plants a replacement itself, covered on our page about a tree preservation order offence
• listed buildings, where the council carries out works required by a listed building enforcement notice

 

Can the cost be secured against your house?

 

This is the question people ask as soon as they understand the bill has no ceiling, and the honest answer is a careful one.

The Act allows regulations to provide for expenses of this kind to be charged on the land. That is a power to make such regulations. It is not the same thing as a charge automatically existing over your property the moment the council sends an invoice.

So if you are facing a bill from direct action, the practical step is to find out what has actually been registered against your title rather than assuming either way. Take advice before you assume that selling up clears it, and equally before you assume your home is already at risk.

 

Getting in the way is its own offence

 

Wilfully obstructing somebody exercising this power is a criminal offence.

It is a much smaller one than breaching the notice. It is dealt with in the magistrates court and the fine is capped at level 3 on the standard scale, currently £1,000, rather than being unlimited. That is a meaningful difference, and it is worth knowing that the low level ones were not swept up when Parliament removed the caps on the serious planning fines in 2015.

Small or not, standing in front of a machine is the worst available option. It adds a conviction, it does not stop the work, and it destroys any goodwill you might have needed later about how the bill is calculated.

 

Can you appeal or stop direct action?

 

There is no appeal against direct action itself, and that is the hard part of this page.

If the notice is still capable of a sensible negotiated solution, section 173A may still matter. The council can waive or relax a requirement or extend the compliance period even after the notice has taken effect. But a request does not suspend the notice or the council’s section 178 power by itself, so get any agreed change confirmed before assuming direct action has gone away.

The time to argue was when the notice was served. A valid appeal against an enforcement notice suspends it until the appeal is decided, so while that is running there is nothing for the council to enforce. Once the appeal is over and the compliance period has expired, the notice simply bites, and the choice of how to enforce it belongs to the council.

Two narrow arguments do remain once the work has been done. The expenses must have been reasonably incurred, so a bill can be challenged on the amount rather than on the principle. And the council must have been acting within the notice, so work going beyond what the notice actually required is open to question.

Beyond that the only route is judicial review, which is about the lawfulness of what the council did rather than whether it was fair, and it has very short deadlines. Our guides to planning appeals and to the enforcement appeal grounds explain the routes that exist while a notice is still live, which is where the real opportunity sits.

 

Is there a cost?

 

Direct action is usually the most expensive thing that happens in an enforcement case, and the reason is structural rather than punitive.

• you are paying a contractor the council chose, at the price the council agreed, on a job nobody was competing for
• there is no cap and no published scale, because it is a recovery of what was actually spent
• officer time and professional fees can form part of what is recovered
• your own legal costs sit on top, if you dispute the bill

None of this is a planning fee. What councils charge for applications is a separate matter, and our guide to planning application fees covers it.

 

Should you just let the council get on with it?

 

Occasionally people decide it is easier to let the council do the work. It is worth being clear about what that decision costs.

Doing the work yourself is almost always cheaper, because you choose the contractor, you get quotes, and you control the scope. You can also do it tidily, which matters if you intend to keep living there. Letting the council do it means paying for a job specified by somebody with no interest in your budget, and then being pursued for the money as a debt.

The situation where it genuinely is the better option is where you simply cannot fund the work at all. Even then, say so to the council in writing and early, because the compliance period can sometimes be extended by agreement where there is a real plan, and an extension costs nothing to ask for.

If a council has told you it is preparing to carry out works at your expense, that is the point to get advice rather than after the invoice arrives. You can reach our team via here to help.

Direct action: relevant legislation

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

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s178: the power to enter and take the steps and recover expenses at subsection (1), the recovery route against whoever committed the breach at subsection (2), the regulation making power about charging expenses on the land at subsection (5), and the obstruction offence at subsection (6)
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s179: the separate criminal offence of being in breach of an enforcement notice, and the unlimited fine that goes with it
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s173: what an enforcement notice may require, which sets the outer limit of what the council may do at your expense
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s219: the equivalent recovery provision for untidy land
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s209: the equivalent provision where the council plants replacement trees
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s42: the equivalent power where the council carries out works required by a listed building enforcement notice, and recovers the cost from whoever did the works

Other Enforcement Sections

 

 

 

Direct action Page Updated: 26th August 2026