Planning Permission vs. Discharge of Conditions: Why One Is a Dream and the Other Is a Contract

If you are a subcontractor chasing work, "Planning Permission Granted" is often the most frustrating phrase in the English language.

You see the alert. You call the developer. And you hear the same three words: "We aren't ready."

Why? Because Planning Permission is just a piece of paper that says they are allowed to build. It doesn't mean they have the money, the contractor, or the intent to start building today. In the UK, a developer can sit on a "Granted" permission for three years without digging a single hole.

If you are chasing Planning Approvals, you are chasing dreams.

To win work in 2026, you need to stop tracking "Permission" and start tracking mobilisation.

The Signal: Discharge of Conditions

When a council grants planning, they attach conditions. The most important ones are Pre-Commencement Conditions.

These are legal requirements — like submitting a specific Drainage Strategy, a Construction Management Plan (CMP), or Site Levels — that must be approved by the council before a single spade hits the ground.

If a developer submits a Discharge of Conditions application, it means:

• They are funded. They are spending money on engineers and application fees.
• They are timed. They cannot mobilise until this is signed off (usually 8 weeks).
• They are buying. They need groundworkers, fencing, and site setup immediately.

The good news? They're easy to spot. On most council planning portals, a Discharge of Conditions submission appears as a separate application — usually labelled "Discharge of Condition(s)" and linked back to the original permission. Once you know to look for it, the signal is hard to miss.

The Boarding Pass Analogy

Think of a construction project like booking a holiday:

• Planning Permission is looking at the brochure. They might go.
• Discharge of Conditions is printing the boarding pass. The taxi is booked. They are leaving the house.

If you are a taxi driver (subcontractor), you don't make money waiting outside the house of people looking at brochures. You make money picking up the people holding boarding passes.

The Takeaway

Stop filling your pipeline with "Approved" projects that might never happen. Start filtering for Discharge of Conditions. It's the difference between a lead and a contract.

Want to try this strategy? Get Discharge of Conditions alerts sent to your inbox →