A landlord with an expired certificate renews it. A developer who puts a spade in the ground one day before submitting a CIL commencement notice loses every exemption and relief on the scheme, permanently, and the appeals almost always fail. Development compliance is not about staying compliant. It is about the order things happen in, and the handful of gates you only get one attempt at.
Everything else on a development can be corrected, negotiated or retrospectively regularised at a cost. These four cannot, and each of them turns on something happening before a machine arrives on site. They are the reason this service exists and they are what we look at first on any instruction.
Under regulation 67 of the CIL Regulations, a commencement notice must reach the collecting authority at least one day before development starts. Not on the day. Before it.
Miss it and three things happen automatically: you lose any exemption or relief granted, you lose the right to pay by instalments so the whole levy falls due at once, and the authority can add surcharges.
Appeals against this routinely fail, including in sympathetic cases. The government has itself called the consequences disproportionate and has consulted on capping the penalty — but that is a proposal, not the law today.Work carried out before a genuine pre-commencement condition is discharged is not authorised by the permission. That is the Whitley principle, and it is far harsher than most developers expect.
The consequence is not a fine. It is that the works may be unlawful development, that the permission may not have been lawfully implemented at all, and on a permission approaching expiry that can mean it is gone.
Read the condition wording rather than the heading. Whether a condition truly bites before commencement is a question of construction, and it is where the arguments happen.Where mandatory biodiversity net gain applies, development cannot lawfully begin until the local planning authority has approved the biodiversity gain plan. It operates as a deemed pre-commencement condition on the permission.
From 6 August 2026 the regime changed: sites under 0.2 hectares are exempt unless on-site priority habitat is harmed, temporary development reinstated within five years is exempt, and the self-build exemption was removed altogether.
The changes apply only to applications made on or after 6 August 2026. Anything submitted before that date, and section 73 variations of it, continues under the previous rules.For a building of 18 metres or seven storeys, construction cannot begin until the Building Safety Regulator has approved the application. There is no equivalent of starting at risk.
Approval times have been the single largest programme risk on tall residential schemes since the regime began, and while the Regulator’s throughput has improved since it became an independent body in January 2026, the queue is real and it has to be in your programme rather than in your optimism.
Design changes after submission restart the clock. This is a reason to fix the design earlier than feels comfortable, not later.The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 and introduces Environmental Delivery Plans, under which a developer can pay a Nature Restoration Levy to Natural England instead of arranging its own mitigation for a specific impact. Natural England notified an intention to prepare 23 of them in December 2025 — sixteen for nutrient pollution and seven for great crested newts — and the levy rates sit in secondary legislation that is still awaited. Two things matter for planning purposes. Using an EDP is voluntary, so it is an option rather than an obligation. And an EDP discharges only the impact it covers: biodiversity net gain still applies in full, and so does everything else. Anyone telling you the Act removes your BNG obligation has misread it.
Tell us about the scheme and where you are in the process, and we will build the pre-commencement gate list — what has to happen before a machine arrives, in what order, and which items you cannot fix afterwards. It is a desktop check rather than a review of your actual conditions, but it is enough to know whether to stop.
The gate list builds as you answer. What we are really looking for is whether anything on it is irreversible and still outstanding.
A desktop check from your answers, not a review of your decision notice. Whether a given condition genuinely bites before commencement is a question of construction on the actual wording — which is the first thing we read on a real instruction.
Not planning consultancy — your planner gets the permission and we would not try to replace them. What we do is everything that happens to that permission afterwards, which is where the money is quietly lost.
Every condition on the decision notice, classified as pre-commencement, pre-occupation, or compliance-in-perpetuity, with the evidence each one needs and who has to produce it. On a large permission this is forty conditions and the classification is where the risk sits.
Submitted early enough to absorb the statutory determination period and the inevitable request for further information. Deemed discharge exists but it is narrow and it is not a plan — it is what you fall back on when the programme has already gone wrong.
Assumption of liability, any relief or exemption claim, and the commencement notice, in the right order and with the notice served before anything happens on site. We also check the calculation, because CIL is charged on measured floorspace and the measurement is frequently wrong.
Trigger points, payment dates, affordable housing delivery, and the review mechanisms that let you revisit an obligation where viability has genuinely moved. Most s106 breaches are not refusals to pay, they are triggers nobody was watching.
Baseline survey, the metric, the biodiversity gain plan through to approval, and then the part everyone forgets: the habitat management and monitoring obligations that run for thirty years and are secured on the land.
Gateway 2 before construction and Gateway 3 before occupation on higher-risk buildings, plus the Building Safety Levy from 1 October 2026 and the second staircase requirement for new residential above 18 metres from 30 September 2026.
Reading somebody else’s permission before you buy the site — what has been discharged, what has not, whether the permission has been lawfully implemented, and what the outstanding obligations will cost. This is where the largest findings are.
Every obligation, its trigger, its owner, its evidence and its status, visible to you, your contractor and your funder. Monitoring conditions are a project management problem that happens to be legal, and treating it the other way round is why they get missed.
A single-plot infill with three conditions and no CIL does not need a compliance function; it needs an afternoon and a decent checklist, and we will tell you that rather than opening a file. The schemes where this earns its fee are the ones with a long condition schedule, a CIL liability with relief attached, biodiversity obligations running thirty years, a higher-risk building in the mix, or a site bought with somebody else’s permission and nobody quite sure what was discharged. We are also not planning consultants, ecologists or lawyers — we instruct and manage those specialists, and where you already have people you trust we will work alongside them rather than around them.
Three ways in, and the cheapest one is usually the right place to start. A review that tells you there is nothing outstanding is a good outcome, and it costs a fraction of the programme.
Strategic sites, phased permissions and schemes with a higher-risk building are quoted individually, because the work follows the condition schedule rather than the unit count — a 30-unit scheme with forty conditions is more work than a 200-unit scheme with twelve. Application fees, survey costs and specialist fees are pass-through at cost, and we take no commission from any consultant or contractor we introduce. We are not planning consultants, ecologists or solicitors and do not pretend to be: we instruct and manage them, and where you already have advisers you trust we work alongside them. If you are about to start on site and something is outstanding, call rather than filling anything in. That conversation is free and the timing is the whole point.
If a machine is arriving and you are not certain everything is discharged, ring us today — the timing on these is the whole point and a conversation costs nothing. For anything less urgent, send the planning reference and we will read the conditions.
Four questions. We will come back with what we think is outstanding, what is irreversible, and what it would cost to run properly.
It changes the number of obligations far more than the value does.
Choose as many as apply.
The authority matters here — CIL rates, validation standards and discharge turnaround vary enormously.
No charge for the conversation. If you are about to start on site and something is outstanding, say so and we will call you today.
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What the law will cost you over a ten-year hold, before you commit to buying.
Ten-year capex forecaster with the yield impactfrom £450 →An outsourced building safety function for freeholders, RTM companies and managing agents.
Compliance calendar — every documented check a building needsfrom £2,400 a year →A costed, sequenced route to the 2030 standard against the £10,000 cap — then the works run.
Retrofit pathway planner, domestic and commercialfrom £250 →Less than you would like, which is the trap. A material operation comprised in the development is enough — digging a trench for a foundation, laying out a road, demolition in some cases. Bringing a welfare unit onto site or fencing it may not be, but the line is thinner than site teams assume and it is judged on what was physically done rather than what anyone intended. This matters because CIL, the biodiversity gain plan and every pre-commencement condition all key off that moment. Our practical advice is simple: decide the commencement date deliberately, put it in writing, and make sure nobody drives a machine onto the site before the paperwork that depends on it has gone in.
Yes, and it is the single most expensive administrative failure available to a developer. Under regulation 67 of the CIL Regulations the notice must be received at least a day before development begins. If it is not, any exemption or relief granted falls away, the right to pay by instalments is lost so the whole levy becomes payable at once, and the authority can apply surcharges. Appeals to the Planning Inspectorate against this routinely fail even in sympathetic cases, because the requirement is treated as one of strict compliance. The government has itself described the consequences as disproportionate and has consulted on replacing them with a capped penalty — but that is a proposal. Today the position is as harsh as it sounds.
No, and this is a genuine and widespread misreading. The Act received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 and introduces Environmental Delivery Plans, under which a developer can pay a Nature Restoration Levy to Natural England rather than arranging its own mitigation for a specific environmental impact. Natural England notified an intention to prepare 23 of them in December 2025, sixteen for nutrient pollution and seven for great crested newts, and the levy rates sit in secondary legislation still awaited. Two points matter: using an EDP is voluntary, and an EDP discharges only the impact it covers. Biodiversity net gain continues to apply in full alongside it, as does everything else.
Possibly, and it depends on the habitat rather than the area. From 6 August 2026 the smallest developments are exempt from mandatory biodiversity net gain, but the exemption falls away where on-site priority habitat would be negatively affected — so an unsurveyed site cannot rely on it. Two other changes landed the same day: temporary development where land is reinstated within five years became exempt, and the self and custom build exemption was removed entirely. Crucially, all of this applies only to applications made on or after 6 August 2026. If your application went in before that date, the previous rules continue to apply — including to any section 73 variation of it.
Four things, in this order. Whether the permission has been lawfully implemented, because if work began in breach of a pre-commencement condition it may not have been. What has actually been discharged, evidenced by the authority’s written confirmations rather than by the seller’s recollection. What the outstanding section 106 obligations are and which triggers have already passed. And the CIL position — whether liability was assumed, whether relief was claimed, and by whom, because relief is personal and does not simply transfer with the land. This is the exercise with the largest findings, and it is much cheaper before exchange than after.
Your planner gets the permission, and we would not try to replace them. What we do is everything that happens to that permission afterwards: reading the condition schedule properly, classifying what genuinely bites before commencement, running the discharge applications to a programme, sequencing the CIL forms, tracking the section 106 triggers against the build programme, and holding the biodiversity obligations for the thirty years they run. It is a project management discipline that happens to be legal in character, and treating it the other way round — as a legal problem somebody will deal with when it arises — is precisely why conditions get missed. Where specialist input is needed, whether planning, ecological or legal, we instruct and manage it.
Not necessarily, and speed matters more than anything else at that point. Some consequences are genuinely fixed — a lost CIL relief is very hard to recover — but others turn on how quickly the position is addressed, whether a retrospective application or a fresh permission is available, and how the matter is presented to the authority before it becomes an enforcement question rather than a conversation. What is certain is that doing nothing and hoping is the worst of the options, because the passage of time removes the routes that were open at the start. Call us the same day rather than waiting for a report.
They lose it on the one condition that turned out to be pre-commencement, the notice that went in on the morning work started rather than the day before, and the obligation inherited with a site that nobody read. All three are cheap to prevent and impossible to undo.
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