If your council suspects that something has been built or changed at your property without planning permission, they have a number of tools available to them. One of the first formal steps they may take is to serve a Planning Contravention Notice — commonly known as a PCN.
What it is
A PCN is not an enforcement notice. It is not an accusation, and it does not mean the council has decided to take action against you. It is, in essence, a formal request for information. The council uses it to establish whether a breach of planning control has actually occurred and, if so, what the nature of that breach is.
PCNs tend to be used where the position is not immediately obvious. If an extension is visibly taller than the approved plans, an enforcement officer can simply measure it. But where the suspected breach involves a change of use — whether a property is being used as a house in multiple occupation, for example, or being regularly let on short-term platforms such as Airbnb — the council will need more information before it can reach a view. A PCN allows them to ask for it formally.
What you are required to do
You are legally obliged to respond to a PCN fully and honestly, within the time limit specified on the notice — usually 21 days. Failing to respond, or providing inaccurate information, is a criminal offence carrying a maximum fine of £1,000. In practice, prosecutions are rare, but failing to respond will not make your enforcement problem go away.
How to respond
The most important thing I can tell you is this: get professional advice before you reply. Your answers to a PCN may determine whether the council decides to take further enforcement action, and how serious that action is. While your response must by law be truthful and complete, there is still a significant difference between a well-considered response and one that inadvertently makes things worse.
We have taken on enforcement cases where a client’s response to an earlier PCN had made their situation considerably more difficult than it needed to be.
Do not ignore the notice, and do not be aggressive or defensive in your dealings with the enforcement officer. Engagement is almost always in your interest. Enforcement officers have discretion over whether to pursue a case further, and officers are naturally more inclined to take a pragmatic view where the person on the other side has been cooperative and reasonable.
What happens next
Once the council has considered your response, it will decide whether a breach of planning control has occurred and, if so, whether it is in the public interest to take further action. That decision is discretionary — the council is not obliged to pursue every breach. Minor breaches that cause no real harm are often closed without further action.
If the council takes the view that planning permission might be granted for what has been built or changed, you may be invited to submit a retrospective planning application. If it takes the view that the development is clearly unacceptable, it may move towards serving an enforcement notice — a more serious step, with more serious consequences (and a right of appeal).
Either way, a PCN is a prompt to take the matter seriously. It is not the end of the road, but it is not something to sit on either.
If you have received a PCN and would like advice on how to respond, get in touch.
