A skeleton in your planning cupboard?

Asks Geoffrey Hopton, former regional director of the Countryside Landowners’ Association and a consultant on rural and agricultural matters to Worcester based solicitors Morton Fisher.

Just suppose you own property and know that you have carried out development without planning consent: or maybe you have unauthorised uses for one of your buildings: or perhaps you have continued to ignore planning conditions or other limitations set by the planning authority: and after all this time you have remained undetected, can you make it legal without applying for planning permission?

You certainly can, provided the breach took place long enough ago and you have good enough evidence, on the balance of probability, to prove it.

The Planning and Compensation Act 1991 now states that the minimum period necessary to the local authority taking enforcement action are as follows:

1. For operational developments- four years.

2. For continuous use as a single dwelling-four years.

3. For breaches of change of use or planning conditions or limitations-10

years.

The ability to prove the date of the commencement of any of these breaches is critical and in the case of the single dwelling its lack of continuity of use, self-containment or full domestic facilities will weigh very heavily against success. Given all the right answers you can apply to the Council for a Certificate of Lawfulness of Existing Use or Development or CLEUD for short. It will cost the same as if you were applying for planning permission.

Get it right and you are back on the right side of the law; get it wrong and you face enforcement action and retrospective planning permission. That is why it is wise to seek professional advice and make sure that your case is watertight before approaching authority to ask for your Certificate.

If you make the case and the Council has no refuting evidence they have no alternative but to issue you with your CLEUD. There is a right of appeal to the Secretary of State, which must be lodged within three months if you fail. Successful applicants sleep better at night!