Zoning & Land Use  ·  October 10, 2026

Your City Is Slow-Walking Your Permit. Now What?

The short answer

A missed deadline is not just a missed deadline. Under California law a city that blows a statutory permit clock can find that the project is deemed approved by operation of law, or that it has committed a statutory "disapproval" that carries mandatory attorney fees and, if the agency then fails to carry out the court's compliance order, fines starting at $10,000 per housing unit.

Three things make this area worth understanding precisely rather than approximately.

The deemed-approval statute was rewritten in 2025, and the applicant-notice precondition that the older descriptions of this rule turn on does not appear in the operative text.

A city cannot buy itself time unilaterally. The Permit Streamlining Act permits exactly one extension of the decision deadlines, by mutual written agreement, for no more than 90 days.

Almost none of this reaches a commercial project. The remedies that get written about are, with one important exception, limited to housing. Knowing which exception is general-purpose is the difference between a letter that works and one that does not.

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How long does a California city have to act on my permit?

Longer than the filing date suggests, and from a starting point that is not the filing date. There are three separate clocks and they do not run from the same event.

Completeness: 30 days, and a trap in the default

Government Code section 65943 requires the agency to determine in writing whether an application is complete "[n]ot later than 30 calendar days after" receiving it, and to transmit that determination immediately. If the application is incomplete, the agency must give "an exhaustive list of items that were not complete," limited to its own published checklist — and on any later review "shall not request the applicant to provide any new information that was not stated in the initial list of items that were not complete."

That last clause is the one to quote in a letter when the third round of comments introduces a brand-new demand.

Miss the deadline and the application is deemed complete — but note the condition inside subdivision (a): the automatic deeming applies where "the application includes a statement that it is an application for a development permit." Put that sentence in your cover letter. It costs nothing and subdivision (a) is written around it.

A resubmittal starts a fresh 30 days. Subdivision (b) runs another 30-day clock on the supplemented application, and subdivision (c) requires a final written determination on an incompleteness appeal not later than 60 calendar days after receipt of the applicant's written appeal, with deemed completeness if the agency misses it.

The decision clock: section 65950

Section 65950(a) sets the outer deadlines for approving or disapproving a development project, keyed to the environmental document and stated in plain days rather than business days: 180 days from certification of an EIR; 60 days from adoption of a negative declaration; 60 days from a determination that the project is exempt from CEQA; 60 days from receipt of a complete application for a ministerial project. A further 30-day track applies to projects exempt under Public Resources Code section 21080.66, running from the later of two dates the paragraph specifies.

Two shorter EIR tracks — 90 days and 60 days — exist, but subdivision (c) limits them to housing development projects. A commercial project with an EIR gets the 180-day track.

The ministerial track is not hypothetical for housing: accessory dwelling unit approvals under the 2024 recodification are ministerial by statute, and the 2026 amendments widen them further — see whether an HOA can stop you building an ADU.

A city gets one extension of the decision deadlines, and only with your signature

Section 65957, in full:

"The time limits established by Sections 65950, 65950.1, 65951, and 65952 may be extended once upon mutual written agreement of the project applicant and the public agency for a period not to exceed 90 days from the date of the extension. No other extension, continuance, or waiver of these time limits either by the project applicant or the lead agency shall be permitted, except as provided in this section and Section 65950.1. Failure of the lead agency to act within these time limits may result in the project being deemed approved pursuant to the provisions of subdivision (b) of Section 65956."

One extension. Mutual. Written. Ninety days maximum, with the section's own exceptions for section 65950.1. An applicant presented with a second tolling agreement is being asked for something section 65957 does not appear to authorize, and a file containing a stack of them is a file in which the deemed-approval argument has become harder to make.

Note the scope of that cap. Section 65957 governs the decision deadlines in sections 65950, 65950.1, 65951 and 65952. The separate completeness deadlines in section 65943 may be extended by mutual agreement under subdivision (d) of that section, without the one-time or 90-day limit.

A note on arithmetic before any of these are calendared

Several clocks in this area are 30 days long, no two of them start from the same event, and the unit is not uniform. The completeness clock in section 65943 is 30 calendar days from receipt of the application. The inconsistency-documentation clock under the Housing Accountability Act, below, runs from the completeness determination. The improvements-list clocks added in 2026 are 30 business days, one running from the applicant's request and the other from the date the post-entitlement application is deemed complete. A third runs against the applicant: the request for a list of improvement types has to be made within 30 days of submitting the application, after which the agency or utility has 30 business days to answer. Count each one from the statute's own words and its own trigger, not from the length.

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What happens if the city misses the deadline?

For a development project of any kind, the answer begins with Government Code section 65956(b), as it currently reads:

"In the event that a lead agency or a responsible agency fails to act to approve or to disapprove a development project within the time limits required by this article, the failure to act shall be deemed approval of the permit application for the development project."

That is the entire subdivision. There is no applicant-notice precondition in it.

This matters because the prior version of the rule had one. Under the earlier statute the deemed-approval remedy was tied to the applicant's own provision of the public notice the agency had failed to give. AB 130 (Stats. 2025, ch. 22) rewrote section 65956 effective June 30, 2025, and that structure is not in the operative text.

What remains alongside it: subdivision (c) preserves an applicant's failure to submit complete or adequate information as a ground for disapproving a project, and subdivision (d) preserves the agency's own notice-and-hearing obligations. Neither is written as a condition on the deemed approval in subdivision (b).

That is a reading of the current text, and it should be treated as that. The amendment is recent and no published decision has yet construed it, so a city attorney has room to argue that the notice requirement courts read into the prior version survives the rewrite. The textual argument is a good one; it is not yet a settled one.

Cautions before anyone relies on this

First, the clock has to have started. The section 65950 deadlines do not run from the day an application is filed; they run from certification of an EIR, adoption of a negative declaration, a determination of CEQA exemption, or receipt of a complete application for a ministerial project. An applicant whose environmental document is not yet certified has no running decision clock to miss, however long the file has been open.

Second, the extension question comes first. The deemed approval attaches when the agency fails to act "within the time limits required by this article," and the article includes section 65957's extension mechanism. Whether a valid extension was taken is the first thing a city attorney will raise.

Third, the remedy is a permit, not money. Which is why, for a housing project, it is usually the second-best theory.

And one caution that matters most on the ground. A deemed approval is a legal consequence, not a document. No certificate issues, the agency may well dispute that the condition was met, and the question of whether the clock ever started — and whether a valid extension was taken — is litigated, not assumed. Breaking ground on a self-assessed deemed approval, without a judicial determination or the agency's written acknowledgment, risks a stop-work order, abatement, penalties, and the loss of any argument that construction lawfully commenced. The deemed approval is the basis for a writ petition. It is not a building permit.

Section 65956 is the provision in this group with the widest reach. It applies to "a development project," unqualified, so the deemed-approval remedy extends to commercial and industrial permits as well as housing. The completeness rules in section 65943 and the extension limit in section 65957 are general in the same way. Nearly everything else below is not.

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Does a housing project get better remedies than a commercial one?

Substantially better, and the reason is a single cross-reference in the Housing Accountability Act.

The Act defines "disapprove the housing development project" to include conduct that is not a vote at all. Government Code section 65589.5(h)(6)(B) includes a local agency that "[f]ails to comply with the time periods specified in subdivision (a) of Section 65950."

That cross-reference is the most valuable sentence in the topic, because of what attaches to an HAA disapproval.

Attorney fees are presumptively mandatory. Section 65589.5(k)(1)(A)(ii) provides that a court finding a violation "shall award reasonable attorney's fees and costs of suit to the plaintiff or petitioner," subject to two exceptions stated in the same clause. The court may decline fees where it finds "under extraordinary circumstances, that awarding fees would not further the purposes of this section," and, for a disapproval under subparagraph (J) or (K) of subdivision (h)(6) only, where the agency acted in good faith on a controlling question of law under CEQA. The second does not reach a disapproval under subparagraph (B), which is the blown-deadline theory, so only the extraordinary-circumstances exception is in play here.

Fines start at $10,000 per unit, after a further step. Subdivision (k)(1)(B) requires the court to impose fines on a determination that the agency failed to comply with the court's order or judgment within the time the court prescribed, "in a minimum amount of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) per housing unit in the housing development project on the date the application was deemed complete pursuant to Section 65943." The fines do not attach to the disapproval itself.

Bad faith multiplies them by five. Subdivision (l) applies a five-times multiplier where the agency both acted in bad faith and failed to carry out the court's order, with a further multiplier for a prior violation in the same planning period. It defines bad faith to include "an action or inaction that is frivolous, pretextual, intended to cause unnecessary delay, or entirely without merit."

And the project can still be deemed approved. Subdivision (k)(1)(C) permits the court, where its order has not been carried out within 60 days, to vacate the agency's decision and deem the application approved.

So for a housing development project, a blown section 65950 deadline can support a deemed approval and a statutory disapproval theory carrying fees and exposure to fines. On a commercial project, the deemed approval is the whole of it.

The inconsistency clock, and why it is self-executing

One more HAA deadline is worth knowing. Section 65589.5(j)(2)(A) requires an agency that considers a project inconsistent with an applicable standard to provide written documentation identifying the provision and explaining why, within 30 days of the completeness determination for a project of 150 or fewer units, or 60 days for a larger one. Subdivision (j)(2)(B):

"If the local agency fails to provide the required documentation pursuant to subparagraph (A), the housing development project shall be deemed consistent, compliant, and in conformity with the applicable plan, program, policy, ordinance, standard, requirement, or other similar provision."

Deemed consistent. Not "presumed," not "subject to challenge." That is a powerful default and it runs from a date the applicant can document.

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What changes on January 1, 2027, and how do I enforce any of this?

Two of the bills signed on September 29, 2026 change the post-entitlement phase. Like the ADU bills from the same signing, neither carries an urgency clause, so both take effect January 1, 2027.

AB 1621 — a cap on plan checks, and a widened HAA hook

AB 1621 (Stats. 2026, ch. 780) amends Government Code sections 65913.3 and 65589.5. Its central change is a limit on plan checks, which appears twice in identical language — once for projects of 25 units or fewer and once for 26 or more:

"As part of its review, the local agency or state agency shall not require or request more than two plan check and specification reviews in connection with an application for a building permit."

Three limits on that cap all matter.

The written-findings exception does not reach it. AB 1621 contains a written-findings exception, but it excuses the time limits, not the number of plan checks, and it requires substantial evidence of a specific adverse impact on public health or safety, made within the original deadline. Note also what the cap does not take away from the agency: the same subparagraph provides that an agency may deny an application that is not compliant with the permit standards following two plan check and specification reviews, and that an applicant may request additional submittals of applications that are not compliant with the permit standards.

It applies to building permits only. Each clause says so expressly: the subparagraph does not affect the number of submittals an agency may require "for any postentitlement phase permit other than a building permit." Grading, demolition and offsite-improvement permits are untouched.

It applies only to projects that are at least two-thirds residential. The definition of "postentitlement phase permit" reaches permits to begin construction of a development "that is intended to be at least two-thirds residential." A sixty-percent-residential mixed-use project gets none of this.

AB 1621 also shortens the post-entitlement appeal clocks, measured in business days, from 60 to 30 business days for projects of 25 units or fewer and from 90 to 45 business days for larger ones, each running from receipt of the applicant's written appeal. It adds an express remedy: if the appeal is denied, or no decision issues in time, or no appeals process is provided, "the applicant may seek a writ of mandate to compel approval of the application."

And it widens the HAA hook. The current definition of disapproval reaches an agency that "[f]ails to meet the time limits specified in Section 65913.3." AB 1621 replaces that with failure "to comply with subdivisions (b) to (e), inclusive, of Section 65913.3" — so after January 1, 2027 any violation of the post-entitlement machinery, not merely a blown clock, is a statutory disapproval carrying the remedies above.

One drafting caveat worth stating: AB 1621 contains a double-jointing clause keyed to SB 1072, which determines which version of section 65589.5 becomes operative. The widened hook appears in both alternative versions, so that much survives either way, but confirm the operative version before quoting AB 1621's text of that section as settled law.

SB 1014 — the improvements list, and what it is not

SB 1014 (Stats. 2026, ch. 806) adds Government Code section 65941.3, whose headline feature is a 30-business-day preliminary estimate of required improvements. Read subdivisions (b)(4) and (b)(5) before relying on it: the estimates are "for informational purposes only and shall not be legally binding or otherwise affect the scope, extent, or cost of any onsite or offsite improvements that are required or imposed pursuant to other provisions of law."

Two further details govern how the duty actually works. The duty is opt-in — the city owes nothing unless the applicant affirmatively requests the estimate. And the 30 business days run from submission of the request, not from submission of the preliminary application.

The enforceable half is subdivision (c). Within 30 business days of deeming a post-entitlement permit application complete, the city must provide "an itemized list of all onsite and offsite improvements that will be required," and thereafter may not require an improvement that was not on the list, except on substantial-evidence findings of a specific adverse impact on public health or safety, where the applicant changes the scope of work, or for CEQA mitigation on a discretionary permit.

One limit worth stating plainly: despite the bill's title, section 65941.3 is not general. Subdivision (b) runs only to an applicant for a housing development project as defined in section 65905.5(b)(3), and subdivision (c) runs only to a "postentitlement phase permit" as defined in section 65913.3(k)(3) — that is, a development intended to be at least two-thirds residential. A commercial project gets none of it.

Subdivision (c) is a genuine lock-in, and it is the provision to cite when a new condition appears late. One category of late surprise the improvements list will not protect against is a private one. A required offsite improvement that turns out to cross a neighbor's line is a boundary problem, not a permitting problem; see how long you have to sue over an encroachment.

AB 1738 is a homeowner provision

AB 1738 (Stats. 2026, ch. 271) adds Health and Safety Code section 17970.9. It appears in the same package of 2026 permit legislation, but it is not a developer remedy. It requires a local agency to offer remote inspections to a homeowner or their contractor, for single- or two-family dwellings, for five enumerated categories only: heat pump water heaters, heat pump HVAC systems (these subject to the inspector's discretion), residential reroofs, photovoltaic systems rated 15 kilowatts AC or less together with energy storage, and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

Its compliance deadlines are later than the rest of this package: January 1, 2028 for most jurisdictions, and July 1, 2028 for qualifying cities, meaning cities of 50,000 or fewer that are not otherwise exempt. Cities under 5,000 are exempt outright, as are counties under 150,000 and each city within such a county.

The sentence that gives it force is subdivision (f): a local agency "shall offer a remote inspection at no greater cost and with no greater delay than in-person inspection." That language is aimed squarely at the obvious workaround of offering remote inspection in name and scheduling it a month out.

Which writ, and when

Two mandamus tracks, and the statutes tell you which to use.

Traditional mandamus, Code of Civil Procedure section 1085, compels "the performance of an act which the law specially enjoins, as a duty resulting from an office, trust, or station." A failure to act on a deadline is a section 1085 case, and section 65956(a) says so expressly for the notice-and-hearing remedy, with a statutory preference on the court's calendar.

Administrative mandamus, section 1094.5, reaches a "final administrative order or decision made as the result of a proceeding in which by law a hearing is required to be given, evidence is required to be taken, and discretion in the determination of facts is vested" in the agency. A denial after a hearing is a section 1094.5 case, and the HAA channels enforcement there expressly.

The HAA also carries a short deadline that is easy to blow: a petition must be filed and served "no later than 90 days" from the later of the effective date of the agency's final action or the expiration of specified time periods. Ninety days, not the general limitations period.

What to do first

• Include the statutory sentence in the cover letter — that this is an application for a development permit — so the section 65943 default is available to you.
• Calendar every clock from a documented date. Completeness, the section 65950 decision deadline, the 30- or 60-day inconsistency deadline. Each runs from an event you can prove, and the units differ.
• Treat a request for a second extension as a decision, not a formality. Section 65957 permits one extension of the decision deadlines, by mutual written agreement, for no more than 90 days, and states that no other extension, continuance or waiver is permitted except as provided in that section and section 65950.1. An applicant asked to sign a second one is being asked for something the statute does not appear to contemplate, and signing may complicate a later deemed-approval argument. It may also be the right commercial decision, because an agency that cannot extend can still act within the deadline, and acting can mean denying. Decide it against your own timeline and record the decision in writing either way.
• Decide early whether you are a housing development project. The answer determines whether you have the HAA's fees and fines or only section 65956's permit.
• Write the letter before the deadline, not after. The remedies above are strongest when the record shows the applicant identified the clock in advance.

Our zoning and land use practice handles entitlement and permit disputes. Where the jurisdiction's housing element is out of compliance, a different and stronger theory may be available — see the builder's remedy after AB 1893. And for conversion projects specifically, the ministerial path has its own constraints, covered in what a ministerial entitlement does not deliver.

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Common questions

This article is general information about California law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and case law change, and how they apply depends on the specific facts. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Robert B. Mobasseri, State Bar No. 193193, ROMO Law Group, Encino, California.