Buying new build and discovered planning hasn't been discharged.

RLH33

Of all the conditions routinely attached to a planning permission I would be worried that the contaminated land ones have not been discharged. If there is contamination and it is not dealt with properly it can be harmful to health and cost a lot of money/disruption to deal with contamination retrospectively. What was the land used for before it was housing? Greenfield? Industrial land? Landfill site?

Have they tried to discharge them and got them refused? Or have they literally not bothered to submit anything?

I would refuse to exchange until they have submitted a retrospective application to discharge the conditions but this can take around 8 weeks.

Building control and planning are different departments that don't really interact plus building regs can be dealt with by private companies - it may not be the Council officers that have dealt with the site.

This does sound a bit like a development that I know of so I'd be interested to know which area/town it's in!

Alchopops

I feel your pain as this has just happened to us too. Set to exchange this week and complete at the end of the month but the application for Discharge of Condition 3 was only submitted to the council last week when I'm told it should have been done before construction started months ago, and having spoken to the council they have advised it typically takes 6-8 weeks to be approved.

Luckily we moved in with family after selling our house in August so we have somewhere to live but our mortgage offer expires in a month so we're now faced with the worry of maybe having to re-apply, and it was bad enough the first time!