- Discharge of conditions
- Formal approval of details reserved by condition, before or during build
- Section 73
- Application to vary or remove a condition, creating a new permission
- Section 96A
- Non-material amendment, for genuinely minor changes
- Decision period
- 8 weeks for discharge, 28 days for non-material amendments
- Council fee
- £89 householder and £309 other for discharge, from 1 April 2026
Discharging conditions
Most permissions arrive with conditions attached. Some are simply informative. Others require details to be submitted to and approved by the Council before development begins, or before occupation. Materials, drainage, landscaping, construction management, contamination, ecology mitigation, boundary treatments.
A pre-commencement condition is the one that bites. Start on site without discharging it and you have not lawfully implemented the permission at all. On a permission approaching its three year expiry, that can mean the permission lapses while you believe you have built out under it. It is a genuinely serious failure mode and it happens regularly.
- We read the decision notice and tell you which conditions are pre-commencement and which are not
- We identify what each condition actually requires, which is often less than people assume
- We prepare and submit the discharge application, with the right documents attached
- We chase the Council, because discharge applications sit in queues
Section 73: varying a condition
Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 lets you apply to develop without complying with a condition, or subject to a different one. In practice it is how most minor scheme changes are made after permission, because the approved drawings are usually tied in by condition.
Two things to understand about it. First, a section 73 grant is a new planning permission that sits alongside the original, so you end up with two live permissions and need to be clear which one you are building under. Second, the Council can only consider the condition in question, not reopen the principle, although it can impose different conditions on the new permission.
Section 96A: non-material amendments
For genuinely minor changes, a non-material amendment under section 96A is the cheapest and quickest route: 28 days, and a modest fee. There is no statutory definition of non-material, and Councils vary in how generous they are. A window moved, a material substituted, a minor dimensional change. A storey added is not, whatever the applicant would like.
This is extremely common and usually fixable. The route depends on how far it has drifted: a section 96A if it is genuinely minor, a section 73 if the approved drawings need replacing, a fresh application if the scheme has changed in substance. What does not work is doing nothing and hoping. Unauthorised work does not become lawful for ten years now, and it surfaces at the point of sale.
What we do
- Audit the decision notice and tell you exactly what has to happen before you start
- Recommend the right route: discharge, section 73, section 96A or a fresh application
- Prepare and submit, with the supporting information the condition specifies
- Negotiate conditions that are unreasonable, unenforceable or fail the six tests in national policy
- Deal with breach of condition allegations before they become enforcement notices
Conditions that should not have been imposed
National policy requires conditions to be necessary, relevant to planning, relevant to the development, enforceable, precise and reasonable in all other respects. Plenty of conditions imposed on small schemes fail at least one of those tests. A condition removing all permitted development rights on a single infill dwelling, for example, is frequently imposed and frequently unjustified. These are worth challenging, either at the time or later under section 73.