This post is part of our wider guide to Permit Management Software: The Complete Guide. Here we focus specifically on planning permits and permissions — the dates that matter, the conditions teams routinely overlook, and how to build a reliable tracking system. If your work also touches building and construction permits, the sibling guide on construction permit tracking covers that side in more detail.
1. What Is Planning Permit Software?
Planning permit software is a tool that records every planning permission a person or organisation holds, tracks the key dates attached to each one — grant date, commencement deadline, condition discharge dates, and expiry — and sends automated reminders before those deadlines so approvals never lapse unnoticed.
In practice, planning permit software replaces the spreadsheet-and-memory approach that most teams start with. Instead of one person manually checking a list every few weeks, the system holds the data, calculates what is due, and alerts the right people through email, SMS, or other channels well ahead of each deadline.
A quick but important honesty note: tools like Remindax track deadlines, conditions, and expiries and send alerts. They do not submit planning applications to the council or discharge conditions on your behalf — that remains your responsibility, done through your local authority's planning portal. What the software guarantees is that you will never miss the date when an action is required.
2. Key Planning Permit Dates to Track
Every planning permission carries a small set of dates that, if missed, can be costly or fatal to the project. These are the ones worth tracking from day one:
| Date / Milestone | What it means | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Grant date | The date permission was formally granted by the authority | Starts the clock for every other deadline below |
| Commencement deadline | Latest date by which a "material start" on the works must occur (often 3 years in the UK) | If work has not lawfully commenced by this date, the permission lapses |
| Condition discharge deadlines | Dates by which specific planning conditions must be submitted and approved | Pre-commencement conditions must often be discharged before any work begins |
| Expiry / renewal date | The point at which the permission is no longer valid | Triggers a re-application or, where available, a renewal route |
| Appeal window | The fixed period to appeal a refusal or a disputed condition | Once it closes, the decision is final |
The commencement deadline is the one that catches people out most often. A "material start" — digging foundations, for example — must be a genuine, lawful start, and it must happen before the deadline. Plan backwards from that date, not forwards from today.
3. Tracking Planning Conditions
Most lapsed permissions do not fail because someone forgot the headline expiry date. They fail because of conditions — the smaller, easily missed sub-deadlines buried in the decision notice.
A typical planning permission can carry a dozen or more conditions. They fall into a few broad types:
Pre-commencement conditions
Matters that must be approved before any work starts (drainage strategy, archaeological survey, materials samples, construction management plan). Begin work without discharging these and the start may not count as lawful, putting the whole permission at risk.
Pre-occupation conditions
Items that must be completed before the building can be used (landscaping, parking provision, ecological mitigation).
Ongoing conditions
Obligations that persist after completion (hours of operation, noise limits, monitoring requirements).
Each condition is effectively its own mini-deadline, and each requires a separate submission to the authority for approval. This is where planning condition management earns its keep: rather than tracking one permission with one date, you track one permission with many dates — and you need reminders for each.
With Remindax, log each significant condition as its own tracked item under the parent permission's folder, with its own due date and reminder schedule. That way a pre-commencement drainage condition due in eight weeks alerts independently of the three-year commencement deadline.
4. Who Uses Planning Permit Tracking?
Planning permission tracking is relevant to anyone who holds or manages approvals, but a few groups feel the pain most acutely:
Often juggling multiple sites, each with its own permission, commencement clock, and condition list. A single missed commencement date can sink a project's viability.
Frequently asked by clients to keep an eye on approval status and condition discharge, especially during the gap between approval and the start on site.
Managing a portfolio of clients' permissions, where missing a deadline is both a project failure and a professional liability.
Monitoring conditions, compliance dates, and enforcement windows across many live permissions.
Holding permissions as assets, where a lapsed permission directly reduces site value.
The common thread is volume and time lag: permissions are granted, then sit quietly for months or years before action is needed. That quiet period is exactly when deadlines slip through the cracks.
5. How to Set Up Planning Permit Tracking
You can build a dependable tracking system in well under an hour. Here is a straightforward setup using Remindax permit management:
Step 1 — Create a folder per project or site
Organise permissions the way you think about your work — by development, by client, or by location — so related items stay grouped.
Step 2 — Add each permission as a tracked item
Record the reference number, grant date, and commencement deadline. If you have the decision notice as a PDF, upload it and let AI SmartDoc read the document and extract the relevant dates automatically, rather than keying them by hand.
Step 3 — Log each significant condition separately
Add pre-commencement and pre-occupation conditions as their own tracked items with their own due dates, so each one alerts independently.
Step 4 — Set up reminder sequences
Instead of a single alert, build a sequence — for example 90, 30, and 7 days before a deadline — across email, SMS, or WhatsApp, so the right people are nudged repeatedly as the date approaches.
Step 5 — Bulk import an existing portfolio
If you already track permissions in a spreadsheet, use bulk import to load them all at once rather than entering them individually.
Step 6 — Schedule audit reports
Generate Excel or PDF reports of upcoming and past deadlines for board updates, client reporting, or compliance records.
Once it is set up, the system runs itself. You add new permissions as they are granted, and the reminders take care of the rest.
6. Start Tracking Your Planning Permits Today
Planning permission represents months of effort and significant cost. Letting one lapse over a missed date is an avoidable, expensive mistake — and the only thing standing between you and that mistake is a reliable reminder.
Start free — the free plan covers up to 15 items, with multi-channel reminders, AI SmartDoc date extraction, and audit reports built in.
Start Tracking with Remindax →7. Frequently Asked Questions
In the UK, most full planning permissions are valid for three years from the grant date, meaning work must lawfully commence within that window (outline permissions and some authorities differ, so always check your decision notice). In the US, the validity of a development permit varies by jurisdiction — many run one to two years — so confirm the term on your specific approval.
If a permission lapses because work did not commence in time, it is no longer valid and cannot simply be extended. You generally have to submit a fresh application, pay the fees again, and go through the assessment process anew — with no guarantee the outcome will be the same, since policies and circumstances may have changed.
No. Remindax and similar tools track deadlines, conditions, and expiries and send alerts. Submitting applications and discharging conditions is done through your local authority's planning portal — the software's job is to make sure you never miss the date when that action is due.
Log each condition as its own tracked item with its own due date. In Remindax you can group conditions under the parent permission's folder and give each one an independent reminder sequence, so a pre-commencement condition alerts separately from the headline commencement deadline.
Yes. Remindax offers a free plan that lets you track up to 15 items, which is enough to cover a small portfolio of permissions and their key conditions before deciding whether to upgrade.