How can we make it work better?

Planning enforcement is important. Unless it’s done effectively, the integrity of the whole planning system is put at risk. But it’s one of the most frustrating issues for civic societies and local community groups. 

Cases typically include:

• Large developments that grossly fail to meet planning conditions or even submitted drawings and plans;
• Illegal demolitions;
• Unauthorised residential alterations and extensions;
• Additional floors built on top of blocks of flats;
• Illegal tree felling;
• and many others

They can all have significant impacts on individuals and local communities.

Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) are under no legal obligation to act against any single breach. LPAs will take action only if it is deemed “expedient” in the public interest. Minor or technical breaches are unlikely to be pursued, and in some cases the development will receive retrospective approval.

Planning enforcement has often been treated as a “Cinderella service”, underfunded, understaffed, and overwhelmed. LPAs tend to use strict triage systems: only cases of the highest urgency are pursued as a priority, while the bulk of complaints are relegated to already massive backlogs. Cases can take months or even years to resolve.

Some developers are also adept at navigating the system to delay enforcement action, while civic societies and others sometimes find themselves having to gather the detailed evidence to prove that serious harm is being done.

Our two highly experienced guest speakers were from two neighbouring but very different councils:

• Roald Piper, Team Leader, Westminster City Council Planning Enforcement
• Tim Rolt, Planning Enforcement Manager, Brent council

The purpose of the meeting was to explore with them how Councils and civic societies can work together to make the planning enforcement regime work as effectively as possible, in the interests of us all.

Meeting Record

Michel Jubb, Chair of London Forum, introduced Brian Keane of the Planning, Environment & Transport Committee, as chair of the meeting.

The complete event recording is here, with Q&A, and a textual report below including links to the presentations.

Presentations

Planning Enforcement Presentation – Westminster
Planning Enforcement Presentation – Brent

Westminster: resources, process and priorities

Roald Piper opened by setting out the scale of Westminster’s task: an eight-square-mile borough with over 11,000 listed buildings and 56 conservation areas covering almost 80% of its area, served by a 22-strong enforcement team handling roughly 2,500–2,800 complaints a year. Westminster issues more enforcement notices than any other authority in the country, with an 80% success rate defending appeals.

He was clear that while taking enforcement action is discretionary, having an enforcement function is, in his view, effectively mandatory — a council that ignores clear breaches risks findings of maladministration. Decisions on whether to act turn on “expediency”: the harm caused, planning policy, and whether the development would likely gain permission if applied for retrospectively. Retrospective applications themselves cannot be refused simply because unauthorised work has already happened, though a newer “enforcement warning notice” now compels owners to regularise or face formal action, and only one bite at retrospective permission is now allowed.

Piper illustrated how unpredictable timescales can be, contrasting a straightforward case resolved within three months against one dragged out for years through appeals and a planning inspectorate backlog now running to 12 months. The evening’s centrepiece was the Carlton Tavern (pictured), demolished virtually overnight in 2015 days before a listing consultation would have protected it. Westminster secured a High Court injunction, prosecuted, and ultimately forced a full rebuild — using salvaged materials — that reopened in 2021, at a cost to the owner estimated in the millions. It stands as a striking example of enforcement holding a determined developer to account, though only after direct legal intervention and community pressure.

Westminster prioritises four areas: protecting residential accommodation (including short-term letting), residential amenity, heritage assets, and the environment, triaging cases by harm. Piper was candid that with around 6,000 planning applications a year, the council cannot check compliance on site — it relies on neighbours and societies to report breaches, ideally with dates, photographs, and details of who is responsible.

Brent: doing more with less

Tim Rolt’s team is a fraction of Westminster’s size — five officers on a base budget of £205,000 — yet issues a similar volume of enforcement notices (around 120 a year from roughly 1,000 reported breaches, of which 400 are screened out at the desk stage for lack of evidence). Brent, unusually, does not accept anonymous complaints.

Brent’s distinguishing feature is its heavy use of direct action: rather than relying solely on prosecution, the council sends in contractors to physically remove or demolish unauthorised structures — sheds, canopies, roof terraces, marquees, shipping-container conversions — and recovers the cost through the courts, recovering around 90% of what it spends. A five-year contractor arrangement underpins this, alongside income from the Proceeds of Crime Act (ring-fenced back into the enforcement team) and from appeal costs. Illustrative cases ranged from the comic — a “deceased” husband who reappeared on site during a caravan enforcement, leading to a fraud prosecution and a prison sentence — to the more serious, including a £250,000 Proceeds of Crime recovery from an offshore-registered property let through agents.

Rolt’s central message was that Brent’s model depends on sustained support from senior management and successive chief planners willing to back an approach that looks expensive up front but is largely self-funding over time. He was sceptical of noise management plans as an enforcement tool, calling them “unenforceable,” and noted that Brent’s own environmental health team — only three officers, working nights — makes noise enforcement difficult even with clear decibel conditions.

Themes from the Q&A

Several issues recurred across both boroughs’ Q&A sessions. Noise conditions are notoriously hard to enforce without dedicated monitoring evidence, and residents’ informal readings (even decibel-meter apps) carry no weight. Both speakers stressed that they rely heavily on societies and neighbours for evidence — dates, photographs, and impact — since neither borough has capacity to inspect completed developments against approved drawings as a matter of course. Appeals to the Planning Inspectorate are a major bottleneck, sometimes taking a year or more, meaning a straightforward breach can take three to four years to resolve even when the council acts promptly throughout.

Audience members also raised the mismatch between planning and licensing regimes (the more restrictive condition applies, but the two are not always aligned), and the frustration of seeing the Planning Inspectorate overturn local decisions made under the same policies — something both speakers attributed to the inherent judgement involved in weighing planning balance, subject to a right of appeal. Asked why enforcement is discretionary at all, both argued that the system exists to remedy harm, not to punish technical or trivial breaches, and that a duty to act on every breach regardless of impact would be unworkable.

For societies dealing with weaker or less confident enforcement teams, the speakers’ advice was practical: build a track record by providing strong, specific evidence, and consider engaging local councillors to give officers political backing, since enforcement teams without that support may hesitate to act even when they have the tools to do so.

Key takeaways for members

The evening underlined the same conclusion from two very different boroughs: enforcement effectiveness depends less on legislation — which both councils operate identically — than on resourcing, political backing, and the quality of evidence societies themselves can supply. Members are strongly encouraged to report breaches with names, addresses, photographs, dates and details of responsible parties wherever possible, and to raise concerns with local councillors where enforcement teams appear under-resourced or unsupported.