New legislation to increase planning application fees in England takes effect on December 6. Graeme Thorpe, associate at PWA Planning, summarises the main changes.
Planning application fees in England are about to get significantly more expensive following the introduction of an amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2023.
While the fee increases are unlikely to have a major impact for householder applicants, or those submitting one-off schemes, they will have bigger cost implications for housebuilders and commercial developers, who will need to factor in the changes to their development budgets.
Why are planning application fees going up?
The government’s decision to increase planning fees is part of attempts to boost capacity within local planning authorities and improve the speed and efficiency with which planning applications are determined.
According to the Local Government Association, current planning fees simply do not cover the cost of processing applications with local planning authorities operating at a deficit of more than £245m in 2020/21. The RTPI has previously estimated that £500m of additional funding over four years would be needed to improve the planning system through recruitment and upskilling.
The government first set out its plans for tackling the issue in February 2023 as part of an eight week consultation entitled ‘Stronger performance of local planning authorities supported through an increase in planning fees’.
How much are planning application fees going up by?
Planning application fees in England will see a 25% across-the-board increase and a 35% increase for major schemes (as defined by the legislation).
In addition to the increase in planning application fees, the so-called ‘free go’ for application resubmissions is being removed. However, applications that were already eligible for a free resubmission prior to the December 6 date will remain so.
An annual inflation-linked rise to the application fees (capped at 10%) made every April from 2025 onwards is also being introduced.
What else is changing?
The rules around the ‘planning guarantee’ are also being tightened so that any non-major applications, including householder applications, that remain undetermined after 16 weeks (shortened from 26 weeks) will be eligible to receive a refund. The 26-week period for all other cases will remain.
How has the development sector reacted to the increase in planning fees?
The delays in the planning system, particularly since the pandemic, have been well documented and the development and construction industry has broadly welcomed attempts to increase funding, boost capacity and grow skills within local planning authorities.
However, disappointingly the new legislation stopped short of requiring local authorities to ring fence the additional income from the fee increase to spend on planning departments. Working against reduced budgets, having witnessed the hard work of local authority planning departments first hand in my career, I can’t help but think that the government has missed a trick here.
It therefore remains to be seen how much money generated through the increase in planning fees will be retained within these departments for spending on boosting resources and capacity within their planning teams.
