Planning consent

[Tock389]

Could somebody answer me this please.

A friend of mine owns a piece of land behind his garden. That land, along with an adjacent piece owned by a neighbour has been given outline planning consent for homes.

The developer has paid my friend and his neighbour an "option" - i.e a sum of money to secure the land, which the developer will then buy when he is given permission. The thing is, does the developer have to wait for full planning permission before buying the land? A colleague of mine seems to think a developer cannot submit a full application for homes on land that they do not yet own Can someone clarify if this is true?

Its just that my friend really needs his share of the eventual land sale proceeds now...

[sddsddean]

I'm sort of doing this myself at the moment (in a much smaller way!!). You can apply for full planning permission, even if you don't own the land, as long as you inform the owner of the land (which it sounds like the developer has). Obviously, if they got planning permission, they would then have to buy the land in order to build.