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Class E: Repairs to unadopted streets and private ways
Class E provides the Part 9 unadopted street permitted development right for works carried out within the boundaries of an unadopted street or private way where the works are required for the maintenance or improvement of that street or way.
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What does unadopted street permitted development cover?
The statutory test has three main elements:
- The land must be within the boundaries of an unadopted street or private way
- The proposed activity must amount to works to the street or way
- Those works must be required for its maintenance or improvement
Class E is therefore tied to the existing street or way. It is not drafted as a general right to create a new road, extend an existing route across additional land or carry out unrelated development merely because it is close to a private road.
What is an unadopted street?
For Class E, the GPDO defines an unadopted street as a street which is not a highway maintainable at the public expense within the meaning of the Highways Act 1980.
That is a planning definition for this class. In practice, questions about adoption, maintenance responsibility, ownership and rights of access can overlap but are not the same thing. A road can be used by the public without the highway authority necessarily being responsible for maintaining it at public expense.
What is a private way?
The wider GPDO definition of a private way includes a highway not maintainable at the public expense and any other way which is not a highway. That makes Class E wider than a rule concerned only with formally named unadopted streets.
The important point remains the same: the works must be within the boundaries of the street or way and must genuinely be required for its maintenance or improvement.
Maintenance and improvement, not unrelated development
The words “maintenance or improvement” are doing real work. A proposal should be assessed by asking what is being maintained or improved, whether the operation relates to the existing street or way, and whether every part of the works stays within its boundaries.
If a scheme also creates a new access, changes adjoining land, erects structures or involves works beyond the existing way, those elements need their own planning analysis. Class E should not be stretched to cover development which is merely convenient to a road improvement project.
Planning permission is only part of the picture
Class E does not decide who owns the road, who is liable to maintain it, who has a right to carry out the works or whether a private covenant or easement permits them. Nor does it replace any separate highway, drainage or environmental consent that may be needed.
Those are separate questions from whether the works have planning permission through the GPDO.
Current Class E legislation
Read Schedule 2, Part 9 of the GPDO 2015 on legislation.gov.uk. Class E itself contains no separate numerical limits or prior approval procedure, but the works must stay within the description of the class and the wider GPDO still applies.
Explore Part 9
Page Created: 11th August 2023
Page Updated: 23rd September 2026