IN Brief:
- MHCLG updated Responsible Actors Scheme planning enforcement guidance on 10 August 2026.
- The revision removes paragraph 004 to reflect legislative change and updates contact details in paragraph 003.
- Planning Contravention Notices, Enforcement Notices, Stop Notices, and Temporary Stop Notices remain available under the existing framework.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has updated its planning enforcement guidance for the Responsible Actors Scheme, making a limited revision to material first published in November 2023.
The change, dated 10 August 2026, removes paragraph 004 to reflect legislative change and updates contact details in paragraph 003. The wider enforcement framework remains in place, including the powers available to local planning authorities where a prohibited developer carries out development covered by the scheme.
The framework sits under the Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) Regulations 2023, made using powers in the Building Safety Act 2022. Eligible residential developers that do not join the scheme can be subject to planning and building-control prohibitions.
The planning prohibition applies to major development where full planning permission was granted after 4 July 2023, subject to defined exceptions. Development approved before that date can also be caught where a later application, such as reserved matters or prior approval, is needed before work proceeds.
The restriction does not invalidate the underlying planning permission or prevent a prohibited developer from owning, buying, or selling land. Instead, it prevents the prohibited person from carrying out development covered by the regulations.
That creates a separate enforcement route from ordinary planning control. A project can hold planning permission and still face Responsible Actors Scheme enforcement because the breach concerns the status of the developer carrying out the work rather than the absence of permission or failure to comply with a planning condition.
Local planning authorities can use a Planning Contravention Notice where they suspect a breach and need further information about site operations, the developer’s status, or whether an exception applies. The notice can also allow the developer to provide evidence that the breach may shortly be remedied, including where Responsible Actors Scheme membership is imminent.
Where formal action is considered expedient, an authority can issue an Enforcement Notice specifying the apparent breach, the affected land, the parties served, appeal information, and the steps required to comply with the prohibition or cease the relevant activity.
A Stop Notice can be served alongside an Enforcement Notice where activity needs to cease before the enforcement deadline expires. Temporary Stop Notices provide a faster intervention where an authority considers that prohibited development should halt while the position is examined.
The guidance makes clear that Responsible Actors Scheme enforcement should be handled separately from conventional enforcement under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Where both types of breach occur on the same site, action should proceed under the respective regimes rather than being combined into a single process.
The regime adds another status check to pre-construction due diligence. Planning permission, building-control approvals, land ownership, and contractual authority do not by themselves establish that the entity carrying out the development is permitted to proceed under the Responsible Actors Scheme regulations.
Project teams should therefore confirm the relevant developer status before mobilisation and retain that check within their project records, particularly where a scheme relies on later approvals or phased planning submissions.
A stop or enforcement notice issued after mobilisation could affect preliminaries, subcontract commitments, temporary works, plant, finance drawdowns, material orders, and programme obligations even where the main contractor is not responsible for the developer’s scheme status. Contract documentation and client checks therefore need to account for a prohibition that operates separately from the ordinary planning-condition schedule.
The Responsible Actors Scheme also sits alongside the continuing financial impact of historic building-safety remediation. Rydon’s latest accounts, for example, showed the continuing cost of remediation liabilities at company level, while the prohibition regime provides government with a separate mechanism linking remediation commitments to future development activity.
Appeal rights remain available where an Enforcement Notice is served, and relevant enforcement action must be entered on local-authority enforcement registers. An Enforcement Notice issued under the scheme also ceases to have effect where the relevant person ceases to be prohibited.
The 10 August change is therefore an update to the guidance rather than the creation of new enforcement powers. The operative requirements remain centred on developer status, the planning prohibition, and the modified contravention, enforcement, and stop-notice procedures available to local authorities.
