What is an Article 4 Direction? | Planning Permission UK

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Chapters:
00:00:00 - What is an Article 4 Direction?
01:00:00 - Article 4 Direction and Permitted Development
00:02:03 - Article 4 Directions Simplified
00:03:04 - The Challenges of Finding Information on Article 4 Directions
00:04:07 - Finding Article 4 Directions by Property Address
00:07:25 - Getting Around Article 4 Directions
00:08:28 - Understanding Article 4 Directions

What is an Article 4 Direction? | What Are They? How To Deal With Them

In this video, I am going to answer the question: ‘what is an article 4 direction’. So that you can understand what they are and how to get round them to make the planning process as smooth and as fast as possible for your property investment.

I am going to walk you through the different ways of finding out if your property investment is affected by an article 4 direction. And at the end I will be showing you how to get round them so make sure you watch until the end.

Councils have the power to put article 4 directions in place in order to restrict certain parts of permitted development that are particularly problematic at the local level. The most common one that homeowners and property investors tend to find relates to rear extensions (alterations to a house) or hmos (also known as house of multiple occupation).

A COMMON MISCONCEPTION amongst homeowners and property investors alike is that if there is an article 4 direction in place then you can’t get planning permission. This isn’t true - it just means that you will need to apply for planning permission for that particular type of development. It doesn’t mean you will automatically get refused either, it just means that you will need to comply with the relevant policies that the Council has adopted.

Another common misconception is that article 4 directions relate to ALL permitted development. Article 4 directions only relate to the type of permitted development that it refers to. So if the article 4 direction only relates to rear extensions, for instance, you could still benefit from roof extension permitted development. You would just need to apply for planning permission for the rear extension.

If your local Council is super helpful, then they will have an easy search tool on their website where you can put your address in and find out if there are any restrictions. This is the dream.

The next best thing is that the Council will have a dedicated web page that lists all of the article 4 directions on one page. Somewhere either on the webpage or on the links should be a map which will illustrate which geographical areas are affected by the article 4 direction in question.

The next place would be within conservation area statements which usually only relates to alterations to houses as the Council seek to protect the character of the area. Unfortunately, due to the way the information is uploaded on a pdf it means that you really need to know where to look on these. If you word search for ‘article 4’ within the statement then something should come up.

If none of these work then the next step would be to ask the Council themselves. All Councils have a ‘duty planner’ service where an officer will be on hand to ask questions. They should be able to point you in the right direction but don’t assume that this is accurate - always do your own checking.

The last step, if ALL of the above steps fail, is to just apply anyway! You’ll soon find out if an article 4 direction affects your property!

I alluded to this earlier but there are ways of getting round article 4 directions. The first step is to learn what they are and what they mean. Hopefully this video has already shed some light on that - the key takeaway is that if an article 4 direction is in place make sure you check its detail - you may still be able to do the type of development you were looking for. Don’t assume there are blanket restrictions.

One of the main ways to get round them is to apply for planning permission. I know this sounds simple but that is essentially what article 4 directions are telling you to do. Instead of going through the permitted development route, you need to apply. If you do your research and you are confident and your research shows you that despite the article 4 direction being in place that you can get planning permission then go for it.

And if you don’t want the headache of applying for planning permission (and I can understand why) then choose a property that is not affected by an article 4 direction. The savviest investors are the ones that do this because it means that they can completely sidestep the Council and its officers and the unknown time it takes to get planning permission anyway.