Outline or Full Planning Permission: What Is the Difference for a Landowner?

Outline planning permission decides whether a site can be developed and, in broad terms, how much, while leaving some or all of the design to a later application. Full planning permission approves the whole scheme in one decision, every building, road and open space, so building can start once its conditions have been dealt with. Several other kinds of consent sit around those two, and an owner reading a letter, a planning history or a decision notice is likely to meet most of them.

The rules come from the national procedure order for planning applications in England. The Development Management Procedure Order 2015 defines outline planning permission as a permission for the erection of a building granted subject to a condition requiring the council's later approval of one or more reserved matters. Reserved matters are the parts of the design the application has not yet fixed. Full planning permission, which some councils and agents call detailed permission, carries no such condition.

For a landowner the difference comes down to sequence. An outline answers the question that matters most to whether land can ever take homes, whether the council accepts development there at all, and leaves the drawings for later. A full application asks the council to answer that question and the design question together, so the whole scheme has to be designed, surveyed and argued for before anyone knows whether the principle is accepted.

Outline planning permission means the principle is approved and the detail is not. Government guidance describes it as permission that allows for a decision on the general principles of how a site can be developed. The details that can be held back are listed in article 2 of the 2015 order, and there are exactly five of them. An outline can reserve all five or include some of them in full: the guidance says an applicant can choose to submit details of any of the reserved matters as part of an outline application.

Two parts of an outline are not optional. The application must give the proposed use or uses and the amount of development proposed for each, and where access is reserved it must still show the area or areas where the access points will be. So even the barest outline tells the council what is proposed, how much of it, and roughly where traffic will come in.

The council can also ask for more. If it decides an outline cannot be judged without some of the reserved details, article 5 of the 2015 order lets it say so, and the guidance says it must tell the applicant within one month of receiving the application. On a sloping site, beside a listed building or in sensitive countryside, that request is how a council makes sure the principle is not approved blind.

The same national basics apply to every kind of application, and the difference lies in how much design goes with them. The Planning Practice Guidance on making an application sets out the national requirements: a completed application form and the correct fee; a location plan that shows the site in relation to the surrounding area; an ownership certificate, without which the application is not valid; a declaration that any agricultural tenants have been notified; and a design and access statement for major development. On top of that each council publishes its own local validation list, which the guidance says should be reviewed at least every two years.

The guidance asks councils to take a proportionate approach to the information they request, which is part of why an outline is lighter to prepare. The surveys behind a housing application on a field, and why several can only be done in certain seasons, are covered in our guide to selling land with or without planning permission. Each kind of application, from an outline to a reserved matters application or a request to discharge a condition, has its own nationally set fee, and our guide to who pays the fees in a land deal sets them out.

An outline leaves the design open, but the council and its consultees still have to judge what the development might do to traffic, landscape, wildlife and neighbours. The answer the courts accepted is to fix limits rather than drawings: the most homes, the tallest buildings, the area that can be built on, where the access can go. The scheme can change inside those limits but not beyond them. Planners call this the Rochdale envelope.

The name comes from court judgments on permissions granted by Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council: R v Rochdale MBC ex parte Tew in 1999 and the second ex parte Milne case in 2000. The Planning Inspectorate's pre-application advice on environmental impact assessment, published in July 2026, still calls it an acknowledged way of assessing a development where the design needs flexibility. It asks for the maximum design parameters to be clearly defined, for the assessment to take a cautious worst case, and it warns that the need for flexibility should not be abused. That advice is written for national infrastructure projects, but the principle comes from those ordinary planning cases.

On an ordinary outline, the envelope is drawn by two different kinds of plan. An illustrative masterplan shows one way the scheme might be laid out; it is not approved. Parameter plans set the limits that are approved. The Planning Practice Guidance on conditions explains why the label matters: details submitted with an outline must be treated as part of the development applied for, and conditions cannot be used to reserve them for later approval, unless the applicant made clear they were for illustration only.

The words "up to" in a description and the limits on a parameter plan are what a later detailed scheme has to respect. A design that goes beyond them needs a change to the permission itself, through one of the routes described further down, or a fresh application.

Reserved matters are approved by a separate application made under the outline permission. The guidance says it may be made either for all reserved matters at once, or individually, and that a fresh application can be made for alternative details of a matter that has already been approved. A large site is often dealt with phase by phase in this way.

The order of decisions matters more than most owners realise. The guidance on conditions says the only conditions that can be imposed when reserved matters are approved are conditions which directly relate to those reserved matters, and that conditions on anything other than the reserved matters can only be imposed when outline planning permission is granted. In practice, the outline decision is where the council fixes much of what the development must do, from drainage to the timing of the open space, and the reserved matters stage fills in the design.

1. Outline permission is granted. The decision notice lists the reserved matters, the conditions with the reasons for each, and the time limits.
2. Reserved matters applications are made. One application covering all five matters, or several, matter by matter or phase by phase.
3. Reserved matters are approved. Only conditions that relate directly to those details can be added at this stage.
4. Pre-commencement conditions are discharged. Details such as drainage or construction management are agreed with the council before work begins.
5. Work begins within the time limit. Once a lawful start has been made, the permission has been used.

The time limits come from sections 91 and 92 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990: in the usual case reserved matters must be applied for within three years of the outline and work must begin within two years of the last approval, and our guide to selling with or without planning permission explains how that clock runs. Those limits cannot be stretched by the route for changing conditions: the guidance on flexible options says permission cannot be granted under section 73 to extend the time within which a development must be started or reserved matters applied for.

Outline also affects when the Community Infrastructure Levy, the council's per square metre charge on new floorspace, is fixed. The levy regulations treat a permission as first permitting development on the day it is granted, but for an outline that is not phased, on the day of the final approval of the last reserved matter. A phased outline is treated phase by phase. Our guide to Section 106 and CIL explains who pays the levy and why its notices can reach a landowner.

A hybrid application asks for full permission on one part of a site and outline permission on the rest. The Planning Portal describes it as one that seeks outline planning permission for one part and full planning permission for another part of the same site. It adds three points that are easy to miss: the term is not defined in statute, whether to accept a hybrid is at the council's discretion and not something an applicant can insist on, and the Portal's page says its own online system does not take them, so it recommends discussing the proposal with the council before it is submitted.

• The full part is designed and decided in detail, so it can be built once its conditions are discharged.
• The outline part settles the principle and the limits for the rest of the land, and its design follows later through reserved matters, in the way described above.
• The fee is worked out separately for each part on its own basis, subject to the maximum for that part, and the two are added together with no overall maximum, according to the Planning Portal.
• Separate elements. The Portal also notes that, after discussion, a council may allow an application to be split into core elements so that some, such as site preparation works, can be decided first.

For an owner, a hybrid means two speeds on one piece of land. The part with full permission can move to construction while the outline part is still at the drawing stage, and each part has its own conditions and its own clock.

It is not the same, although both settle the principle first. Permission in principle is a separate route, with its procedure set by the Town and Country Planning (Permission in Principle) Order 2017. The government's guidance on permission in principle says it separates the consideration of matters of principle from the technical detail, and that its scope is limited to location, land use and amount of development. The second stage, technical details consent, deals with everything else, and the site must have it before development can go ahead.

There are two ways to get it. A council can grant it on an application, or by entering a site in Part 2 of its brownfield land register, which our guide to whether your land is in the local plan explains. The application route has been open since the 2017 amending Order came into force on 1 June 2018, and only for residential development that is not major development: fewer than 10 houses, less than 1,000 square metres of new floor space and a site under 1 hectare. The guidance adds that neither route is open to householder or minerals development, to habitats development, meaning development that would need an assessment under the habitats regulations, and to development that needs an environmental impact assessment. When it grants permission in principle for homes, the council must state the minimum and maximum net number of homes permitted.

For fee purposes, an application for technical details consent is treated like an application for full permission. And if it emerges at the second stage that an environmental impact assessment is needed, the permission in principle remains valid, but the assessment has to be done before technical details consent can be granted.

Yes, in two main ways, and they work very differently. A small change can be made by a non-material amendment under section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. A bigger change is made by applying under section 73 to vary or remove conditions, including the condition that lists the approved plans. Where the original permission came with a planning obligation, the guidance says that obligation may need a deed of variation to apply to the new section 73 permission.

There is no statutory definition of non-material, so each council judges a change against the scheme it approved. One detail of section 96A concerns owners directly: the power may be exercised only on an application made by or on behalf of a person with an interest in the land, and where the applicant has an interest in only part of the land, the change can only cover that part.

Section 73 has a practical limit too. The guidance says it cannot be used if the permission has no condition listing the originally approved plans. And because the original permission remains intact, the planning register can then show two permissions for the same land, the original and the varied one, which matters when reading the history of a site.

Conditions are attached by the council when it grants permission, and with an outline most of them are attached at that first stage. The Planning Practice Guidance sets six tests, and each of them must be satisfied for every condition the council intends to impose. A condition must be:

• necessary;
• relevant to planning;
• relevant to the development to be permitted;
• enforceable;
• precise;
• reasonable in all other respects.

Three further rules shape what a landowner sees on a decision. A condition cannot require land to be formally given up to another party, and it cannot require a payment. A condition that must be met before any work starts is called a pre-commencement condition, and on a full permission it can only be imposed with the applicant's written agreement; the guidance on conditions says that rule does not apply to a condition imposed on the grant of outline planning permission, so an outline can carry pre-commencement conditions nobody agreed to in writing. And where a council wants a planning obligation in place before development, a negatively worded condition is reserved for exceptional cases where delivery would otherwise be at serious risk, so the usual tool is a Section 106 agreement.

A Section 106 agreement is the planning obligation that secures affordable homes, contributions and other commitments. The guidance on planning obligations says such obligations run with the land, are legally binding and enforceable, and that a planning agreement is entered into by a person with an interest in the land and the council. That is why an owner is often asked to sign one even though the obligations are for the development to meet. An obligation more than five years old that no longer serves a useful purpose can be the subject of an application to change it, even without the council's agreement. With us, negotiating the Section 106 agreement and the planning conditions is part of the planning work we take off your hands.

Start with the first line and work down: the decision notice is a short document, and the law says what it must contain. Article 35 of the 2015 order requires the notice to state clearly and precisely the full reasons for each condition, and the reason a condition must be met before work starts where it is a pre-commencement condition. A refusal must give its full reasons, specifying all the development plan policies relevant to the decision, and every notice must come with a note about the right of appeal.

• The description of development: does it say outline, full or hybrid, and does it give an "up to" figure for the number of homes?
• Which of the five matters were approved with the permission, and which are still reserved.
• The approved plans condition: which drawings it lists, and which documents are described as illustrative.
• The time limit conditions: the date by which reserved matters must be applied for, and the date by which work must begin.
• The pre-commencement conditions: each should give the reason it must be met before work starts.
• Any condition that limits the scheme, such as the number of homes, building heights or the area to be built on.
• The reference to a Section 106 agreement or other planning obligation, and its date, where the permission was granted with one.
• On a refusal: each reason for refusal, the policies named, and the appeal note.

Decision notices are public documents, and the guidance on planning obligations asks councils to make each Section 106 agreement publicly available on the planning register as well; our guide to getting your land ready to sell covers searching that register. When a site has a history, read its notices as a set rather than one at a time. A section 73 permission sits alongside the original instead of replacing it, and a non-material amendment alters the existing permission rather than creating a new one, so what may be built today is the outline, read with its reserved matters approvals and every later change.

The outline is the stage that decides the principle; the detail is fixed later. That has practical effects on the land and the owner, whichever kind of permission is sought.

• What the council settles first. With an outline, the use, the amount, the limits and most of the conditions are decided before a single house is drawn. With full permission, all of that and the design are decided together.
• What can still change. Within an outline, the reserved matters can be designed and redesigned inside the parameters. A full permission can be changed only by a non-material amendment, a section 73 application or a fresh application.
• The clocks. An outline runs to two deadlines, one for reserved matters and one for starting work; a full permission runs to one.
• The Section 106. Whichever route is used, an obligation that runs with the land may need the owner's signature as well as the applicant's.

With us, the planning application is usually in outline, because that establishes that homes can be built without fixing every detail of their design, and many sites also go through the council's local plan. We pay for and run all of the planning work, at our own cost and risk, which on a larger site can reach £300,000. We explain our reasoning to you before anything is submitted and keep you informed at every consultation, committee meeting and decision, and we do not contact the council about your land without your agreement. The agreement continues while any planning application or appeal is being decided, payment is on completion once planning permission has been secured, with milestones set out in the agreement, and if planning is not achieved you keep your land and owe nothing.

Our page on how it works sets out each stage from first conversation to completion. If you would like to know which route might suit your own land, a free desktop review looks at its constraints, its access and the council's position, and gives you a plain answer.