- Two kinds
- Proposed use or development (LDCP), and existing use or development (LDCE)
- Test applied
- Fact and law only. Planning merits are irrelevant
- Burden of proof
- On the applicant, on the balance of probabilities
- Council fee
- Half the full application fee for proposed; the full fee for existing
- Why it matters
- Conveyancing solicitors ask for one, and enforcement cannot touch what is lawful
Proposed, or existing?
A certificate for a proposed use or development confirms in advance that what you intend to do is permitted development or otherwise does not require permission. You are asking the Council to agree with your reading of the rules before you spend money. It is the cheap insurance policy people skip and then regret.
A certificate for an existing use or development confirms that something already there has become lawful, either because it never needed permission or because the time limit for enforcement has expired. This is the route for buildings that went up without permission years ago, uses that drifted, and conditions that were breached long enough ago to be immune.
The time limits, which changed
For breaches of planning control in England, the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 replaced the old four year rule with a single ten year rule, in force from 25 April 2024. The practical position now:
- Breaches substantially completed before 25 April 2024 keep the old rules: four years for building operations and for change of use to a single dwellinghouse, ten years for other changes of use and for breach of condition.
- Breaches on or after 25 April 2024 are subject to ten years across the board.
That transitional split matters enormously. A building finished in 2021 may already be immune under the four year rule; an identical building finished in 2025 will not be immune until 2035. Getting the completion date evidenced properly is often the whole case.
The Council is not weighing whether your building is attractive or your use is neighbourly. It is deciding whether you have proved, on the balance of probabilities, that the facts are as you say. Statutory declarations, dated photographs, utility bills, council tax records, invoices, aerial imagery and sworn statements from neighbours are what win these. Assertion loses them.
What we do
- Work out which certificate you need, and whether you need one at all
- Set out the legal basis precisely, by class and paragraph of the GPDO or by the relevant time limit
- Build the evidence file, and tell you what is missing before it is submitted
- Draft the statutory declarations and witness statements in the form the Council will accept
- Prepare the plans and the written statement of case
- Submit, and deal with the Council's questions on the evidence
- Advise on appeal if it is refused, where the test on appeal is the same test on the same evidence
When a certificate is worth the money
- Before you build something under permitted development that a neighbour is likely to complain about
- Before you market a property with an annexe, outbuilding or converted loft that has no permission on file
- When a buyer's solicitor has raised an enquiry you cannot answer
- When the Council has started asking questions about a use, before a formal enforcement notice appears
- When permitted development rights may have been removed by condition and you need to know
Fees
Our fee is fixed and quoted on the evidence involved, because a certificate for a proposed rear extension is a very different job from twelve years of occupation history. The Council's fee is half the full application fee for a proposed certificate, and the full application fee for an existing one.