Planning enforcement letter in London? Our written help is £290

What a letter, a site visit and a contravention notice mean

Most enforcement cases start gently: a letter asking about work a neighbour has reported, an officer’s visit, or a planning contravention notice. That last one is a formal list of questions, issued under section 171C of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 where it appears there may have been a breach of planning control. None of the three is an enforcement notice, and none of them decides anything yet.

You still have to take a planning contravention notice seriously. The reply is due within 21 days, and under section 171D failing to comply, or giving false or misleading information, is an offence. It is a defence to show a reasonable excuse for not replying, so tell the council early if you need a few more days.

• A letter or email asking you to explain or stop: no legal deadline, but ignoring it invites a formal step
• A planning contravention notice: questions you must answer in writing within 21 days
• A breach of condition notice: it enforces a condition on your permission and, as the guidance says, has no appeal to the Secretary of State

Where this page stops and the notice review starts

This service is for the earlier stage. If the council has already served an enforcement notice, with a date on which it takes effect, you are on a short clock for an appeal and you need our enforcement notice review instead. The two do not overlap: we would not sell you this one when the notice has already been served.

Not sure which one you hold? An enforcement notice is headed that way, sets out the breach, the steps required and the date it takes effect, and comes with a copy of the Planning Inspectorate’s appeal information. Send us a photo of it and we will tell you which review fits, before you pay for either.

Checking whether time has already made it lawful

Councils cannot enforce for ever. Under section 171B, the limit for building work in England is 10 years from when it was substantially completed, for work completed on or after 25 April 2024, and 4 years for work completed before that date. Change of use to a single dwellinghouse follows the same split; other breaches have a 10-year limit.

That date is often the whole case, and it is a fact more than an opinion. We work out when the work was finished from your records, aerial images, council tax or utility dates and neighbours’ recollections, and tell you plainly if the evidence is thin. Where the point turns on law rather than dates, we say so and refer you to a planning solicitor, because we are not solicitors.

What our paid review gives that a free one does not

A free review is usually a short opinion given before the firm quotes for its own next step. That can be useful, and ours is a different thing. You pay for a written report, written by a chartered architectural technologist (MCIAT), that you keep and can hand to a solicitor, a buyer or a lender.

It reads the council’s letter against the planning history and the approved drawings, not the letter alone. It weighs every route: a retrospective application, a smaller change on site, a lawful development certificate if time or permitted development is on your side, or doing nothing and why. And if a change would settle the council’s concern, we can draw it.

Why the early reply matters

The guidance says councils should act in a proportionate way, and that enforcement is discretionary. A clear, accurate and prompt reply is often what keeps a case at the letter stage. A late, partial or contradictory one is how it moves on to a formal notice.

The guidance also warns that a person who has built without permission has only one opportunity to obtain permission after the event, whether by a retrospective application or by appealing an enforcement notice. That is why the order of your next steps matters, and why we set them out before you write back.

Retrospective planning applications · All planning problem reports