The government has launched a consultation on a proposed increase to planning application fees.
The consultation proposes to increase planning application fees for major applications by 35% and for all other applications by 25%. In addition there would be future, annual adjustments in line with inflation. This change would mean an initial fee increase for a single house application from £462 to £578. It is also proposed to charge a double fee for retrospective applications.
The consultation also seeks views on whether the additional fee income generated by the increases should be ringfenced for spending in the local authority planning department.
A major change that the consultation proposes is also to remove the ‘free-go’ for repeat applications, or alternatively to charge a reduced fee for re-applications. The stated justification for that is to encourage use of pre-application discussions with the Local Authority rather than for applicants to use the first application as a pre-application substitute.
The consultation also seeks views on how the government could ‘support greater capacity and capability within local planning departments and pathways into the profession’.
Other changes included in the consultation are;
- A change to the planning guarantee for non-major applications, reducing the timeframe on a non-major application to 16 weeks from 26 weeks.
- Performance measures for Local Authorities being based upon the percentage of applications dealt with within the statutory determination period (ie ignoring extensions of time).
- Introduction of a ‘customer experience measure’ into performance statistics. ‘A ‘customer experience’ measure could be based on a standardised customer satisfaction survey which focuses on the overall quality and timeliness of both the pre-application service and the decision-making service’.
The full consultation document can be read at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/increasing-planning-fees-and-performance-technical-consultation/technical-consultation-stronger-performance-of-local-planning-authorities-supported-through-an-increase-in-planning-fees and runs to the 25th of April 2023.
If you have any queries with the consultation then please do not hesitate to contact us.
