Planning conditions attach to the permission, not to the applicant. A condition that requires a landscaping scheme to be implemented before occupation, or restricts the use of a barn conversion to agricultural workers, or requires a traffic management plan to be discharged before development commences — that condition runs with the land and binds every future owner, regardless of whether they were party to the original application or even aware of it.
Not all conditions are equal at the point of sale. The conditions that create the greatest risk for a buyer are those that impose ongoing obligations — obligations that will survive the transaction and bind the buyer from the moment of completion.
Occupancy conditions are the highest-risk category. An agricultural occupancy condition restricts who can legally occupy the dwelling to persons employed in agriculture or forestry. A rural workers condition imposes a similar restriction under more recent policy. A holiday let condition restricts a dwelling from being used as a primary residence. These conditions are enforceable indefinitely, and a buyer who purchases without understanding them may be in immediate breach of planning control after completion.
Pre-commencement conditions on an unimplemented permission are the second major category. If a property is sold with the benefit of a planning permission, the buyer needs to understand whether any pre-commencement conditions have been discharged — because development cannot lawfully start until they have.
A section 106 agreement is a planning obligation entered into between the applicant and the LPA, typically as part of the grant of planning permission. Like planning conditions, s106 obligations run with the land. They bind successors in title.
Common s106 obligations include: affordable housing contributions (on larger residential schemes); highway contributions; maintenance obligations for open space or landscaping; restrictions on the development or use of adjoining land; and in some cases, obligations that tie the use of one parcel of land to another parcel the applicant owned at the time.
S106 agreements are registered as local land charges — they should appear on an LLC1 search. But the obligation itself is in the agreement, not in the charge entry. Understanding what the obligation actually requires needs the full s106 document, not just the charge entry.
Planning conditions are attached to the permission — they are accessible, in principle, through the planning register. But several categories of condition are routinely missed by standard conveyancing searches.
Conditions on pre-merger district council permissions are the most common gap. Where a district council was reorganised into a new unitary authority, the historic permissions — including the conditions attached to them — were transferred to the new authority's records. That transfer was not always complete, and the conditions from the predecessor authority may not be accessible through the current portal interface.
Conditions on permitted development — where development was carried out under a prior approval process rather than a full application — appear in a different part of the planning register and are frequently missed by standard searches. And for Welsh properties, conditions on permissions from Welsh LPAs may be stored on the Civica Portal 360 system that blocks automated access.
We retrieve the full planning history including all conditions attached to any permission on the property — pre-commencement conditions, occupancy restrictions, s106 obligations, and discharge status. From £149. Passes as a disbursement.
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