Planning
Proposed Changes to Householder Permitted Development: Where Things Stand
The 2024 proposals to enlarge householder permitted development have not become law. As of mid-2026 they remain proposal-only — and in conservation areas they may not apply at all.
5 min read
What the law actually allows today
It helps to separate settled law from headlines before considering any proposal. Under the current permitted development regime — the General Permitted Development Order 2015, as amended — a house (not a flat or maisonette) can generally take a single-storey rear extension of up to 3 metres for terraced and semi-detached homes, or 4 metres for detached, without a planning application. A larger single-storey extension, up to 6 metres or 8 metres respectively, is possible only through the prior-approval 'larger home extension' route, which involves notifying neighbours. Loft alterations are limited by volume — broadly 40 cubic metres of additional roof space for terraced houses and 50 cubic metres for semi-detached and detached — and outbuildings are constrained by the rule that development must not cover more than half the land around the original house.
These are the numbers a design should be tested against right now. They are also, importantly, the numbers that a proposal is asking to change — which is precisely why it is worth being clear about which is which.
What was actually proposed
In February 2024 the government opened a consultation, 'Changes to various permitted development rights', which ran for eight weeks and closed on 9 April 2024. For householders it floated a genuinely significant loosening: deeper single-storey rear extensions (from 4 to 5 metres for detached homes, and from 3 to 4 metres for others), deeper two-storey rear extensions, removal of the 50 per cent curtilage limit, removal of the cubic-metre caps on loft conversions, small increases in permitted ridge height, and — for the first time — extending roof-alteration rights to flats.
Taken together these would have meaningfully enlarged what many homeowners could do without a planning application. That is why they attracted attention, and why some homeowners began, understandably, to imagine designing to the proposed limits rather than the current ones.
Where things stand as of mid-2026
The essential point, as of July 2026, is that none of these householder proposals has become law. The consultation closed more than two years ago and the government has not published a response setting out which changes, if any, it intends to bring forward. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in December 2025, is substantial legislation — but it concerns infrastructure, development corporations and the planning system's machinery, not householder permitted development rights.
The most recent amendment to the permitted development order, made in 2026, is narrower still: it corrects some cross-references and adds a right for shops to install deposit-return machines. It does not touch rear extensions, loft volumes or the curtilage rule. In short, the framework a homeowner must design to today is the same one that applied before the consultation. The proposals remain proposals, and a consultation carries no guarantee that any particular figure will survive — or be enacted at all.
Why this matters especially in conservation areas
There is a second reason not to design around these proposals, and it is one that bears heavily on much of prime and north-west London. Permitted development is already substantially curtailed on what the legislation calls designated land — conservation areas, National Parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. On that land, side extensions and roof alterations are not permitted development in the first place, cladding is excluded, and the enlarged rear-extension routes are restricted. Many of the very rights the consultation proposed to expand are ones that homeowners in these areas cannot currently use at all.
Layered on top of that are Article 4 directions, which local authorities use widely across boroughs such as Camden to remove permitted development rights that would otherwise apply — meaning a planning application is required for work that elsewhere would be automatic. Even if the government eventually enacts a generous version of its proposals, an Article 4 direction or conservation-area designation could leave a specific property entirely unaffected by the change.
The practical takeaway
For anyone planning work now, the guidance is straightforward: design to the law as it is, not to a proposal that may be altered, delayed or dropped. A scheme sized to a hoped-for future allowance is a scheme built on sand — and the cost of discovering that late, after drawings and expectations have been set, is far higher than the cost of establishing the true position at the outset. This is exactly the kind of question worth settling first — through our guide to whether you need planning permission and, where a property's position is genuinely unclear, a short pre-application enquiry: what it can lawfully do today, which designations and directions apply to it, and where the sensible route runs.
We will update this note if and when the government publishes its response. Until then, the honest position is that the proposed expansions to householder permitted development are not law, may never take the form consulted upon, and — for a great many London homes in conservation areas or under Article 4 directions — may make little practical difference even if they do.
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