Guide
Do commercial heat pumps need planning permission?
Updated
The permitted development rights people quote for heat pumps are mostly domestic ones. On a commercial building the position is different, and it is different in a way that costs programme time if it is found late.
What Part 14 contains
Schedule 2, Part 14 of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 is the microgeneration part. Its non-domestic classes are Class J (solar equipment), Class K (stand-alone solar), Class L (ground source heat pump), Class M (water source heat pump), Class N (biomass flue) and Class O (combined heat and power flue). Air source heat pumps appear at Class G, and Class G is for domestic premises. There is no air source class for non-domestic premises (legislation.gov.uk).
Class L, for a ground source heat pump within the curtilage of a building other than a dwellinghouse or block of flats, is permitted subject to conditions: the total area of excavation must not exceed 0.5 hectares, there must not be more than one ground source heat pump within the curtilage, and the pump must be removed and the land restored when it is no longer needed.
Other rights that can apply
Part 7 Class I permits, on industrial land and for the purposes of an industrial process, the installation of additional or replacement plant or machinery. It does not permit development that "would materially affect the external appearance of the premises of the undertaking concerned", and plant may not exceed 15 metres above ground level or the height of anything it replaces, whichever is greater. That is a genuinely useful right for plant in a works yard, and no help at all for a heat pump array on the front elevation of an office.
Treat this as a programme item
- Establish the route early. Permitted development, prior approval or a full application changes the programme by months, not weeks.
- Part 14 keeps being amended. legislation.gov.uk lists amendments to Part 14 in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026, with further changes recorded as not yet applied. Confirm the version in force on the day you apply.
- Get the noise assessment done first. Where planning permission is needed, the acoustic case is usually the substance of it, and it also drives the physical design.
- Listed buildings and conservation areas are separate. Listed building consent is a different consent, not a harder version of the same one.
- Confirm with the local planning authority. A pre-application enquiry that costs a few hundred pounds is cheaper than a redesign.
Scotland and Wales have their own permitted development orders. The classes above are the England position.