When planning permission is granted, it almost always comes with conditions attached. Some conditions restrict what you can do and when. Others require you to submit information to the council — and get their approval of that information — before you can proceed. Discharging a condition means formally obtaining the council approval required by the condition. Until a condition is discharged, you may not be able to start work, or continue with certain aspects of the development. The application to discharge conditions is a separate submission to the council, carries a fee, and requires the council to respond within 8 weeks.
A condition precedent is a planning condition that must be satisfied before any development commences. Starting work on site before discharging a condition precedent can invalidate the entire planning permission — meaning everything you have built is unauthorised. Courts have consistently held that a condition requiring submission and approval of details before development begins must be complied with strictly. Even carrying out minor preparatory works — stripping topsoil, setting out — before a conditions precedent has been discharged can be enough to invalidate the permission. Identify every pre-commencement condition before breaking ground.
Conditions precedent typically contain wording such as: no development shall commence until, before the development hereby permitted begins, or prior to the commencement of development. Any condition with this type of wording must be discharged before work starts. Read every condition on your decision notice carefully and categorise them: pre-commencement (must discharge before starting), pre-occupation (must discharge before using the building), and ongoing (must comply with throughout). Ask your planning consultant or solicitor to review them if there is any doubt.
To discharge a condition you submit an application to the local planning authority using the standard form (available on the Planning Portal), together with the information required by the condition — such as material samples, drainage details, archaeological watching brief methodology, or ecological mitigation plans. The current fee is £34 per request for householder applications and £116 for other applications. The council has 8 weeks to respond. If they do not respond, the condition is not automatically discharged — you must chase them or treat the non-response as a refusal and appeal.
If you start work without discharging a condition precedent, the permission is invalid and the development is unauthorised. The council can issue an enforcement notice requiring the works to be undone. If you occupy a building without discharging pre-occupation conditions, you are in breach of the permission and potentially in breach of a planning condition — which carries enforcement consequences. When you sell, your solicitor will be asked to confirm that all planning conditions have been discharged and will obtain copies of the discharge approvals. If conditions have not been discharged, this can delay or prevent a sale.
Before you buy a property or land with planning permission, the planning record tells you every condition that has been attached to that permission and whether those conditions have been discharged. Pre-existing undischarged conditions are a risk that transfers to the buyer. We surface all conditions and their status as part of a full planning intelligence report.
Before you make any decisions, we retrieve the complete planning history for your property — including conditions, enforcement records, and legacy data that standard searches miss.
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