Summary

  • The Department for Infrastructure’s open consultation proposes a permitted-development route for new ground-based masts up to 30 metres outside designated areas, with council prior approval focused on siting and appearance. It has not changed the law.
  • The consultation’s draft already describes developer notice to landowners and agricultural tenants, plus a 28-day period for written representations. A new question asks whether councils should separately notify neighbours. Those mechanisms should not be mistaken for one another.

In Northern Ireland, the proposed change is still a question, not a rule. On 9 October, eight days after opening its consultation on mobile-telecommunications permitted-development rights, the Department for Infrastructure added a question: should councils have to notify neighbours when an application seeks prior approval for a new ground-based mast? Responses are due by 17:00 on 23 December 2026. The update did not announce a new notification duty or an approved mast policy. It brought a procedural gap into view while the proposed route is still being designed.

The underlying proposal would alter Part 18 of the Planning (General Permitted Development) Order (Northern Ireland) 2015. Under the existing Part 18, a new mast that is not replacing an existing one is among the forms of development that Class A does not permit. The consultation proposes a new permitted-development right for a ground-based mast up to 30 metres, calculated with attached equipment and supporting structure, outside designated areas. The route would require prior approval from the local council. These are draft changes offered for comment, not an entitlement an operator can use today.

A permitted-development right is still a planning route. It sets in advance which work can proceed under the order, and on what conditions. The proposed prior-approval step would let a council examine specified local effects without opening every question that a full planning application can raise. Here, the consultation identifies siting and appearance. It describes a 56-day decision period from receipt of a valid application, with a longer period possible by agreement. If the council refuses prior approval, the mast cannot proceed under this route and a full application may be needed.

That narrower review makes the notice architecture consequential. Under a full planning application, the consultation says, the ordinary process includes public notification, consultation with relevant consultees and determination by the local planning authority. The proposed route is meant to be more proportionate. The question is whether the route that replaces the full application carries a public-facing signal that is just as legible to people near the site.

The draft annex already contains one notice mechanism. Before submitting the prior-approval application, the developer would have to send written notice to each other owner of the land and to any agricultural tenant. The notice would identify the developer and site, describe the proposed mast and its dimensions, name the council, say where the application could be inspected, and explain how to make written representations about siting and appearance. The draft gives 28 days for representations, beginning the day after the notice is sent.

That is not the same as a council notifying neighbours. Owners and agricultural tenants are defined recipients; nearby residents may not be either. The draft also says the application would be available for public inspection and permits written representations, so it would be wrong to say that no public input is envisaged. But the consultation’s new question is about a different service: whether the council must proactively tell neighbours that the application exists. A public file and an addressed notice do different work. One makes a record available; the other helps a person know when to look.

The draft’s two clocks also need to be read together. The proposed 28-day representation window begins when the developer sends its notice. The council’s proposed 56-day clock begins when it receives the application; the consultation text says a valid application. The annex says development cannot start until the council says prior approval is unnecessary, grants required approval, or the prescribed period expires without a decision, subject to any agreed extension. If notice, application validity and public inspection do not line up, the nominal window may overstate the time available to a neighbour who learns of the case late.

The consultation does not yet specify a neighbour boundary, delivery channel, minimum contents, proof of service, accessible format or how a late or undelivered notice would affect the council’s timetable. Nor does the new question propose widening the council’s assessment beyond siting and appearance. Notification gives people a chance to submit relevant information; it does not, by itself, change the legal matters a council may determine. Treating it as if it restored the full planning process would overstate what is on offer.

The distinction is important because the Northern Ireland proposal sits between two institutions and two kinds of authority. The Department for the Economy’s Mobile Action Plan, published in 2022, was a cross-sector effort to identify mobile rollout barriers. The Department for Infrastructure now controls this planning consultation. The plan’s purpose of removing obstacles does not settle how local planning participation should work; equally, a notice rule does not decide whether an operator’s coverage case is technically persuasive.

The useful test is therefore not whether one more form is added. It is whether a resident can discover a proposed mast early enough to comment on the matters the council can actually decide, while an operator and council can identify when the statutory timetable starts and ends. If the final order requires council notification, it should specify the recipient class, information and timing, and say how that duty interacts with the developer’s pre-application notice and the 28-day representation period. If it does not, the Department should explain why public inspection and the existing notice route provide adequate notice in practice.

Until the consultation closes and the government publishes its response and final legal text, no one can say which design it will choose. The consultation’s stated benefits—faster infrastructure deployment and investment—are aims, not measured outcomes of this proposal. The evidence to watch is the final Part 18 text, any response explaining the treatment of question 5, and subsequent council records showing whether residents received the promised notice and how representations were handled. A 30-metre threshold describes a structure. The process around it determines whether affected people know that a decision is being made.

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