A Property Project Portal: Planning Permission Is Not Building Regulations Approval

A property project portal should not use one green approval badge for every permission connected with a building project. Before commissioning it, separate the planning decision from the building regulations route and ask who will establish which requirements apply. A document received for one process must not silently satisfy the other.

This matters to a small property business, design practice or contractor coordinating alterations for customers. The useful software decision is not whether an uploaded drawing looks complete. It is whether the team can explain the distinct approval questions, the evidence received for each and the unresolved work that still needs an appropriate professional or authority.

Start with the project, not an assumed permission checklist

Use a fictional shop conversion when discussing the application. Record the site, proposed work and intended use in terms the responsible reviewer can check. A change to that description may change the questions being investigated, so keep the description associated with each review rather than letting an editable project name stand in for it.

Do not ask the developer to infer approval requirements from a short category list. The official GOV.UK planning permission overview says that building something new, making a major change or changing a building's use will probably require planning permission. It directs people to their local planning authority to find out whether their project needs it. The page separately directs readers to the systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This guide uses that English planning context as an example. Translating the interface does not make the same process applicable to another country. Ask the relevant professionals to define your actual jurisdiction and project scope.

Give the two questions separate records

The GOV.UK building regulations approval overview explicitly says that building regulations approval differs from planning permission and that both might be needed. It also explains that approval can be relevant to alteration projects, not only new construction.

For your portal, propose a separate assessment for each relevant route. Each should identify the responsible reviewer, the requirement being investigated, the authority or recognised process involved, the current evidence and the next action. A requirement not yet assessed is not equivalent to a reviewed conclusion that a particular application is unnecessary.

Avoid a generic field called Approval number. A planning reference and a building control reference need clear roles even if both happen to use similar characters. Where one project has several related submissions, let the reviewer identify which work each covers rather than assuming that a shared address makes their scope identical.

Do not make every route look like the same application

The building regulations overview says that someone using a person registered with a competent person scheme does not need to obtain approval themselves. It also describes different arrangements for higher-risk buildings and work that is not higher risk, including exceptions and separate guidance.

These distinctions are reasons to obtain a qualified project-specific routing decision. They are not a complete decision tree to copy from a short article. Do not require a conventional application number where the reviewed route uses different evidence. Equally, absence of that number must not automatically mean the work is exempt.

Let the reviewer record the selected route and supporting explanation. Keep “waiting for assessment”, “application being prepared” and a recorded decision distinguishable. These are proposed business states, not official universal status labels.

Bind the decision to its conditions and work description

Ask what staff must retain from the actual decision or other reviewed evidence. A date and a green icon alone may conceal a limited scope or an unresolved condition. The responsible professional should determine what the evidence permits and what follow-up is required; the portal should make that determination and its basis retrievable.

If the customer changes the proposed work, preserve the earlier record and route the changed description for review. Do not carry a reassuring badge onto a materially different project automatically. Likewise, contractual acceptance by the customer and payment of a design invoice are not substitute evidence for either regulatory process.

This is workflow planning, not legal advice, a permission assessment or certification that work can start. The cited pages do not establish your project's compliance or the complete set of consents it needs.

Test a misleadingly complete project

For acceptance, demonstrate a fictional project with planning evidence received while the building regulations route remains unresolved. Reverse the situation in another example. Include a reviewed alternative route, an unanswered applicability question and a changed work description after an earlier decision.

The dashboard should show exactly which question remains open and who owns it. It should not invent a missing permission, declare an exemption from an empty field or announce that all work may begin. Bring blank process examples to a property-workflow application discussion. First establish whether an existing case-management tool can preserve these distinctions before commissioning a custom portal.