Report an alleged breach of planning control

Before reporting an alleged breach of planning control, it is important to firstly consider if planning permission or advertisement consent would be required and if so, if permission has already been granted.

Is permission required?

Some types of development, including extensions, changes of use and the display of advertisement can take place without permission from the local planning authority.

The following guides explain when permission is required:

Extensions or alterations to a dwelling-house: Permitted development guide (Department for Communities and Local Government)
Changing the use of land or a building: Changes of use guide (Planning Portal)
Displaying an advertisement: Advertisements guide (GOV.UK)

Has permission been granted?

If permission is required, you can check our planning applications database to see if permission has been granted by the Council.

Report breach

If permission is required and has not been granted by the Council, there may be a breach of planning control. In this event, you can report it.

Report unauthorised building works

Report a breach of planning condition

Report unauthorised change of use to land or a building

Unauthorised display of an advertisement

July 2022 – service update

Please be advised that due to a number of factors, including temporary capacity issues and increased service demands, planning enforcement cases are taking longer than would otherwise be normal to review and process. It may also take longer than usual to respond to other general service requests. Measures are being put in place to minimise the extent of any delays and we thank you for your understanding.

Before submitting a request for service/reporting a breach of planning control, please be sure to review the information/guidance on our planning enforcement webpages to ensure that you are confident that the issue you are concerned about is directly planning related.

Important

All alleged breaches must be submitted using one of the forms above.

The Council's planning enforcement function DOES NOT deal with the following types of complaints:

Neighbour disputes including works to party walls or fences, landownership issues, trivial domestic breaches of planning control driven by neighbour disputes and deeds of covenants issues – in these situations you will need to seek your own legal advice.
Non-taxed vehicles Please visit the DVLA website www.gov.uk
Smoke/dust/noise/vibration or odour/ Breach of licenses for business premises Please report it. at https://www.tameside.gov.uk/reportit or contact the Council’s Environmental Health Service.
Water leaks - please report to www.unitedutilities.com/ or telephone United Utilities Customer Services.
Damage caused by Cable TV - Please report to Cable and Wireless.
Damage to Bus Shelters - please report to Transport to Greater Manchester www.tfgm.com or Email: busstop@tfgm.com so they can get them repaired as quickly as possible.

Tameside Council reserves the right not to investigate your complaint unless you have fully completed the form.

There may also be occasions when the Council decides not to investigate your complaint if it is deemed not to be expedient and/or in the public interest to do so. You will be informed if it is decided not to investigate your complaint and why.

Before contacting/notifying the Council of your concerns, you are advised to consider whether your allegations relate to a neighbour dispute and/or if it is in the public interest to pursue.

On this basis the Council looks forward to receiving your completed enforcement complaint form which will enable us to attend to your concern.

Please be aware the Council's resources have been significantly reduced whilst, at the same time, our complaint workload remains very high. Consequently a PRIORITY system has been set up to deal with those alleged breaches which have the greatest potential impact such Demolition or alterations to a Listed Building, felling or works to a preserved tree, breaches of planning control or conditions, which results in serious harm to amenity in a neighbourhood and affects a number of parties and requires immediate attention. This will inevitably lead to some delays in dealing with relatively minor alleged breaches of planning control such as Advert control, or breaches which are technical in nature and not in significant conflict with planning policy or of a temporary in nature.