House owners in Brent, London, should reconsider before altering their residential or commercial properties, as there’s been 6,345 enforcement actions in the district between 2000 and 2025.
Other areas with lots of enforcement actions across England and Wales are Birmingham (5,895) and Westminster (4,808), analysis from The Property Purchasing Business programs.
The variety of enforcement actions in 2025 has actually increased by nearly 25% from 2022, with 10,016 issued compared to 7,591.
Jonny Christie, co-founder of The Residential or commercial property Purchasing Business, said: “It’s fascinating to see several local preparation authorities beyond London issuing some of the greatest numbers of preparing approval enforcement actions, including the similarity Birmingham, Cornwall and Newcastle-Under-Lyme.
“If you’re aiming to build something new, make a major modification to your building, such as building an extension, or altering the use of your structure, you will most likely need preparation approval.
“To discover if you need planning consent, call your local planning authority through your regional council on the gov.uk website.
“This will help to guarantee that you are compliant with the law and assistance to prevent hanging out and money to undo any unapproved changes that have actually been made.”
In terms of the type of enforcement actions, the greatest number was for enforcement notices, standing at 118,213 in between 2000 and 2025.
An enforcement notice is provided by a regional preparation authority when there has been a breach of planning control, such as unauthorised building works which need to be reverted.
Some 117,865 cases are for preparing breach notices, meaning a tool utilized by regional planning authorities to demand information, generally when there has been a problem about works being performed without authorization.
The third most common enforcement action is a breach of condition notice, with 23,233 being issued between 2000 and 2025. These are issued by regional planning authorities when a condition attached to authorized preparation permission is not being fulfilled.