What restricts what you can build.

An application can vary the tie or remove the restriction altogether. National guidance says nothing about removing a tie, so the council's local plan policy is the starting point, though the Framework says a policy materially at odds with it should carry very limited weight. Where a plan asks for marketing evidence, the period and the price it expects are the heart of the application. The second route applies where the condition has been breached continuously for ten years, for instance by someone outside farming living there. The breach is then immune from enforcement and a certificate can record the use as lawful, but the condition itself stays on the permission; the evidence of the whole decade has to hold up.

The two systems run side by side: the council can grant permission for a scheme that breaches a covenant and a restrictive covenant can stop a scheme the council has approved. The routes round one are private: a release negotiated with whoever has the benefit of it, or an application to the Upper Tribunal to discharge or modify it, on grounds such as the covenant being obsolete. Planning permission counts in the Tribunal's decision but does not decide it; in 2020 the Supreme Court refused to lift a covenant even though homes had been built with permission.

The wait gives the council time to decide whether to make a tree preservation order; the restriction applies even where no building work is planned. The notice is required for most work to trees in a conservation area, not only felling: lopping and topping too. Small trees fall below the threshold, measured as a trunk diameter at 1.5 metres above the ground. If the council does nothing in six weeks the work can go ahead, but only for two years from the notice. If it makes an order, consent is then needed under the order like any other protected tree. Working without notice is an offence of the same order as damaging a protected tree.

The ten years run from the start of the breach. Failing to comply with a breach of condition notice is a criminal offence. An enforcement notice can be appealed and the appeal can argue that permission should be granted for what has happened. The Framework of August 2026 adds that where unauthorised development was intentional, that should weigh substantially against a retrospective application (policy DM8). A condition is a binding restriction, so the sensible order is the reverse: apply to vary the condition first, then act on the answer.

Listing restricts the interior as well as the exterior. Anything fixed to the building counts as part of it, whatever its age, unless the list entry excludes it; so do structures in its curtilage that have been there since before 1 July 1948. The council can require unauthorised works to be reversed and can serve that notice on later owners, so a buyer should ask for the consents behind any alteration. Consent depends on whether works affect the building's character, so check even like-for-like repair with the council before starting.

It is the search a buyer's solicitor orders. HM Land Registry has taken over the register for many councils; the rest keep their own. A charge binds the land even if it was never registered and a newly made tree preservation order may not show yet, so ask the council about trees and check its published Article 4 directions as well. Restrictive covenants are in the title, not the search; the planning history is worth reading in full alongside both.

A building can also be listed without the owner's consent. Listing is decided by the Secretary of State on Historic England's advice; a council can protect a building temporarily while that is considered. A tree preservation order takes effect provisionally the day it is made and its protection ends after six months unless the council confirms it. An Article 4 direction can take immediate effect for some rights. Orders and directions have a period for objections. A full planning permission already granted still allows the tree work needed to carry it out.

A permission runs with the land rather than the applicant and so do its conditions. Directions, orders and designations are made against places, not people. A section 106 deed binds successors in title, although it can release a person once they have parted with their interest if the deed says so. The practical consequence is that a purchase inherits every restriction already in place, which is why the time to find them is before contracts are exchanged.