Three years in England, five in Wales — and it is time to begin the work, not to finish it. That distinction is the whole of this article, and getting it wrong is expensive in a way that is entirely avoidable.
The three-year clock
A standard full or householder planning permission carries a condition requiring development to begin within three years of the date it was granted. Not three years to complete. Not three years to get the builder booked. Three years to make a lawful start.
In Wales the same condition applies, but the period is five years.
If you make that start, the permission is kept alive and does not expire afterwards. You can take as long as you reasonably like to finish, subject to any other conditions attached. If you do not, the permission lapses and it is gone.
What counts as "beginning"
Less than you might think, which is the useful part. A material operation is enough — digging a trench for foundations, laying part of a foundation, putting in an access road, or a material change of use. It does not require the builders to move in and stay.
Two cautions, though. First, the start has to be lawful, which means any pre-commencement conditions must be discharged before you break ground. Start digging with conditions outstanding and the start does not count, which rather defeats the object. Second, a token start made purely to bank the permission can be contested if it is genuinely trivial. Councils have seen the trick.
You cannot usually renew it
This is where people are caught out. There was once a straightforward route to extend the life of a permission; for most applications it no longer exists. If your permission lapses, the normal answer is to apply again from the beginning — new application, new fee, and assessed against whatever the policy says now rather than what it said three years ago.
That last point matters more than the paperwork. Local plans change. A scheme that was acceptable in 2023 is not automatically acceptable today, and a lapsed permission gives you no protection. If your permission is heading towards its third birthday and the work has not started, that is the moment to take advice, not the month after.
Outline permission works differently
If you hold an outline permission rather than a full one, the timings split. In England you normally have three years from the date the outline permission was granted to apply for approval of the reserved matters — the details left open at outline stage — and then two years from the final approval of the last of those matters to begin the development. The clock is doing two things at once, and the first deadline is the one people forget.
Note what that second period is not. In England there is no five-year backstop running from the original grant: the commencement deadline is driven entirely by when the reserved matters are finally approved, so approve them early and the permission can lapse well inside five years. Wales kept the older rule, where five years from grant applies unless two years from final approval falls later.
Lawful Development Certificates do not expire
Worth knowing if you are on the permitted development route instead. A Lawful Development Certificate confirms that what you did, or propose to do, was lawful. It is a statement about the law as it applied, not a permission with a shelf life. It does not run out in three years, and it is the document a buyer's solicitor will ask for. Our PD Compliance Pack covers the assessment and the application.
If your permission is running out
You have three realistic options. Make a lawful start before the deadline, having first discharged any pre-commencement conditions. Reapply, accepting that policy may have moved. Or, if the scheme has changed anyway, treat it as a chance to submit the version you actually want to build rather than the one you applied for three years ago.
If reapplying is the answer, the drawing set is the same one as the first time round — existing and proposed plans and elevations, a site plan and a location plan. Our Standard Planning Pack is a fixed £650 with reasonable revisions within the original agreed project brief during the active design and review stage, and there is more on turnaround and what you receive. If it is an extension, the extension drawings page goes through it in detail.
Not sure where your permission stands? Tell us the date it was granted and what has happened since, or ring 0114 463 0090.