Four-year rule lives on (for now)

After retirement it is unsurprising that I have largely lost interest in planning law and practice but, as I have promised, I will leave the contents of this blog available online, subject to the long-standing health warning that posts and comments in the blog must not be treated as legal advice, and that changes in the law, and in its interpretation by the courts, may well render significant parts of the blog out-of-date. Proper legal advice should always be sought from fully qualified planning professionals.

Having said all that, I am still curious to see when the four-year rule is actually going to be abolished, so that all planning enforcement will in future be subject to the 10-year rule. As readers will no doubt be aware, the so-called “Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023” received Royal Assent on 26 October just in time before Prorogation later the same day, bringing the last parliamentary session to a close. Section 115 of that Act will amend section 171B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 so that in England only (but NOT in Wales) the time limit for all breaches of planning control will in future be ten years beginning with the date of the breach.

However, almost the whole of the Act must await the making of a commencement order (or probably a whole sequence of commencement orders, which are not guaranteed to bring every section of the Act into force). Only one very minor commencement provision has so far been promulgated, relating to a handful of abstruse paragraphs in the Fourth Schedule to the Act.

So, for the time being, where a planning breach is either operational development or a change of use to a single private dwelling, the clock continues to count down under the 4-year rule following the expiry of which, such breaches will be immune from enforcement and will then become lawful. Some people in this position are no doubt getting very nervous about the chances of their getting past the finishing post before the axe finally falls on the 4-year rule.

When (or if) the relevant commencement order is made bringing section 115 of the 2023 Act into force (thereby amending section 171B of the 1990 Act) it is by no means certain that it will happen suddenly without any further warning. I would not be surprised if some sort of delayed implementation might be adopted in the wording of the commencement order. (But maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part.)

In the meantime, try not to bite your fingernails down to the quick in your anxiety over this.

Merry Christmas!

UPDATE 2.2.24: The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has finally got around to making a commencement order that brings into force some of the substantive sections of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. These are contained in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 (Commencement No. 2 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024 No.92), which were made on 25th January 2024. However, section 115 of the Act is not brought into force by any of these regulations. So the 4-year rule continues to live on, at least for the time being.

© MARTIN H GOODALL