Outline or Full Planning Permission, or a Certificate of Lawfulness: Which One Your Scheme Needs

The five routes at a glance

Each route decides something different, costs a different council fee and lasts for a different time. The figures below are the fees in force since 1 April 2026 in England, with the rise proposed from 8 December 2026 where it applies.

The full fee schedule, including the December rise, is in our guide to planning application fees 2026. The real timescales are in how long planning permission takes. This article is about choosing between the routes.

Outline planning permission and reserved matters

Outline planning permission is a permission granted with some matters reserved for later approval. The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines it in section 92. The reserved matters are five: access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale. You prove the site can carry, say, twelve homes. You do not yet show what they look like.

That is why landowners use it. Consented land is worth more than hopeful land, and outline is the cheapest way to make a site consented. If you plan to sell land to a developer, or grant an option over it, outline consent is usually the goal.

Our guide to buying land with or without planning shows the price gap from the buyer's side.

The two clocks on an outline consent

Reserved matters must be applied for within three years of the grant. In England the development must then begin within two years of the final approval of those matters. The council can set longer or shorter periods when it grants the permission, so read the decision notice, not the textbook.

London makes outline less light than people hope. The Development Management Procedure Order lets a council tell you, within a month, that it needs further details before it can decide. Where access is reserved, you must show where the access points will be. On a tight urban site the council often wants scale and layout fixed from the start.

Full planning permission: when the detail is the point

A full application approves the scheme as drawn: plans, elevations, materials and the specialist reports behind them. The council has eight weeks to decide, or thirteen for major development, unless a longer period is agreed in writing. Once granted, you have three years to begin, unless the council directs otherwise.

Full is the route for flats, conversions, extensions and anything in a conservation area or next to a listed building. In London it is also the route most boroughs push you towards anyway. If daylight, heritage and transport reports are needed before the principle can be judged, outline saves nothing.

Our Allitsen Road feasibility study shows what a full application involves. The building is a vacant corner site in the St John's Wood Conservation Area, opposite two Grade II listed properties. We produced four costed schemes with a planning strategy in four weeks.

That is a full-application job. The council will judge the elevations, so the elevations have to be designed and priced before you apply.

Certificate of lawfulness: existing use and proposed use

A certificate of lawfulness is a decision from the council that something is lawful for planning purposes. It is not a planning permission. There are two kinds, and they answer two different questions.

Existing use: proving the history

The first is a certificate of lawfulness of existing use or development, under section 191 of the 1990 Act. It confirms that a use, a building or a breach of a planning condition is lawful now. Lawful means no enforcement action can be taken: either no permission was needed, or the time for enforcement has run out.

Once issued, the lawfulness it records is conclusively presumed. That is why buyers and lenders ask for one.

The time limit matters here. Since 25 April 2024 the limit in England is ten years for every kind of breach. It runs from substantial completion for building work and from the breach for a change of use. Work finished, or a use begun, before that date stays under the earlier rules, so the date has to be pinned down.

The burden is on you. Government guidance says the council should grant where your evidence shows lawfulness on the balance of probability and it has nothing to contradict it. Dated leases, rates records, photographs and statements do that work.

Proposed use: the Class E history

The second is a certificate of lawfulness of proposed use or development, under section 192. It confirms that what you propose would be lawful, usually because it is permitted development or a change within the same use class. It holds unless the facts change before you start, for example an Article 4 direction removing the right you relied on.

Here is where the certificate earns its fee for a commercial owner. Class MA prior approval, from offices and shops to homes, needs two continuous years of Class E use before the application. If the history is patchy, a certificate fixes it before you apply. We obtain one before Class MA whenever the two-year Class E history is in doubt.

The rules sit on our change of use planning permission page and in the guide to commercial to residential permitted development.

Fee, time and the one catch

The council fee for an existing-use certificate is the same as a full application for that development. For a proposed use it is half. A certificate that a breach of condition is lawful costs £309, proposed to rise to £360 in December.

The council has eight weeks to decide. There is no duty to consult neighbours, and planning merits are irrelevant. A refusal can be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate. The catch: a certificate obtained on false or misleading information can be revoked, with no compensation.

Retrospective planning permission: the same application, after the event

Retrospective planning permission is permission applied for after the work has been done or the use has begun. Section 73A of the 1990 Act lets the council grant it, and the permission can take effect from the date the development was carried out.

The fee schedule has no separate retrospective rate. An extension pays the householder fee and a conversion pays the change of use fee.

It is not a right. The council judges the application on the same merits as if nothing had been built, so unacceptable work is still refused and enforcement can follow. Where an enforcement notice has already been served, section 70C lets the council decline to determine the application at all. Apply before the notice, not after.

Retrospective is the only route in one common case. You have bought a building with unconsented works less than ten years old, and a buyer or lender wants them regularised. The works are too recent for a certificate and too real to ignore.

Listed building consent: a separate consent, no fee, no immunity

Listed building consent is a separate consent for works that affect the character of a listed building. Section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 bars demolition, alteration or extension that affects that character without it. Inside and out: many internal changes to a listed building need consent even though they would never need planning permission.

There is no council fee for listed building consent. It is applied for alongside any planning permission the same works need, and the two are usually decided together. Like a planning permission, the consent lasts three years from the grant unless the council sets another period.

The reason to take it seriously is section 9. Works without consent are a criminal offence. On indictment the penalty is up to two years' imprisonment and a fine, and the court takes into account any financial benefit from the works.

The ten-year rule above belongs to planning control. It does not apply to listed building control, so there is no sitting it out.

There is a certificate route here too. A certificate of lawfulness of proposed works to a listed building confirms that your planned works need no consent. It carries no fee. On a listed conversion we ask for one before pricing anything internal.

What the route changes for the builder

The application type changes what gets priced and when. On an outline consent we can only price per home on a range, because there are no elevations. On a full application the drawings are priced line by line before submission, so the scheme you consent is the scheme you can afford.

A certificate prices nothing, but it unlocks the Class MA application or the sale. A retrospective case starts with a survey of what was built.

That is why we sit with the planning strategy from day one. Our Development Director has taken more than 10,000 homes through planning and acquired more than £225M of land in his career. Craftex has built since 2016, keeps about 60% of its labour in-house and has delivered every project ahead of programme and on budget.

We take development schemes from £3M to £150M GDV and construction from £100,000.

Send us the address and the idea. Get a free site appraisal and a director tells you the route, the council fee and what the scheme is likely to cost to build.