Submitting a Planning Application

National Planning Fee Increase - 6 December 2023

The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 have been approved and made on 8th November.

The new regulations

The regulations do the following:

• Increase planning application fees by 35% for applications for major development and 25% for all other applications.
• Introduce an annual indexation of planning applications fees, capped at 10%, from 1 April 2025.
• Remove the fee exemption for repeat applications (the ‘free-go’). An applicant will still be able to benefit from a free-go if their application was withdrawn or refused in the preceding 12 months, subject to all other conditions for the free-go being met.
• Reduce the Planning Guarantee for non-major planning applications from 26 to 16 weeks.
• Introduce a new prior approval fee of £120 for applications for prior approval for development by the Crown on closed defence sites.

The new fees will come into force from the start of 6th December 2023.

An applicant will still be able to benefit from a free-go if their application has been refused or withdrawn in the preceding 12 months, subject to all other conditions for the free-go being met.

What will the new fees be?

The Planning Portal has created an new fee schedule for planning fees from 6th December 2023

This can be used, alongside the existing schedule to see how the fees will increase for any given application, and how calculation of them may vary (e.g., based on the split between major and all other development).

The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. These Regulations amend the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012 (S.I. 2012/2920) (“the 2012 Fees Regulations”).

The statutory instrument related to the fee increase can be viewed here, and relates to the The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2017

The Council will update its scale of fees in due course to reflect the fee increase. See Fees and Charges button on this page.