Guides / Guide / 5 min

Planning applications, explained for suppliers

Which new venues need planning permission, what a change of use or a shopfront application tells a supplier, and how long a decision takes.

Published 11 November 2026

A premises licence application says a venue intends to sell alcohol or open late. A planning application says a building is about to change: what it is used for, how it looks from the street, or what is fixed to it. For anyone who sells to new venues it is a second public signal, and it follows different rules.

This guide covers England. The 2020 changes to the use classes described here apply to England only.

Not every new venue needs permission

Planning permission is needed for building work and for a material change of use. Since 1 September 2020, shops, cafés, restaurants, offices, gyms and clinics in England have sat in one use class, Class E (commercial, business and service). Moving from one use to another inside the same class is not development and does not need planning permission, so a shop can become a café without an application for the change of use.

Other venues sit outside every use class. Pubs, wine bars and other drinking establishments, hot food takeaways, live music venues and cinemas are each listed on their own, so turning a shop into a bar or a takeaway does need permission. Hotels have a class of their own, C1.

The change	Is an application needed for the use?	What it tells a supplier
Shop to café or restaurant	Usually not: both are Class E	Watch for the works instead: extraction, a shopfront, signs
Shop, office or bank to bar or pub	Yes: a drinking establishment is outside the use classes	A bar being fitted out. It will need a premises licence too
Any unit to hot food takeaway	Yes: a takeaway is outside the use classes	A kitchen, extraction and a shopfront
Pub or restaurant to flats or a nursery	Yes	A venue closing, not one opening

The works are often the better signal

Even where the use needs no permission, the building work may. Interior alterations are generally not development, but work that materially affects the outside of a building is, and a new extraction flue or a replacement shopfront usually does. Councils publish those applications in the same register.

Signs have rules of their own. Some need no consent, some have deemed consent, and the rest need the express consent of the council, applied for as advertisement consent. An application for a new fascia sign is a venue settling its name and its frontage.

How long it takes

The consultation on an application normally lasts 21 days. The statutory time limit for a decision is 8 weeks for most applications and 13 weeks for major development, and the council and the applicant can agree a longer period in writing. A granted permission is not an opening date: the fit-out comes after it.

Where to find them

The council’s planning register. Most are searchable online by date and by keyword.
Open data. A few councils publish their applications as a file that anyone may reuse under the Open Government Licence.
The site notice or the neighbour letter, if you happen to be nearby.

Reading an application as a supplier

Read what the use changes to, not what it was. An application to turn a former public house into a day nursery names a pub and opens a nursery.
Look for a premises licence application at the same address. Together they show an opening from the building work to the first day of trading.
Approach the business, not the individual. Where the applicant is a person rather than a company, treat their details with care: CiviFlow never shows them.