Increased Planning Fees on the Horizon

Proposals to introduce a national planning fee increase of 35% for major applications and 25% for all other applications, were laid before Parliament on 20th July 2023. These proposals also include an indexation mechanism to allow for annual inflation-related adjustments in the future. Of particular note, the draft regulations remove the so-called ‘free-go’ for repeat applications. They also reduce the Planning Guarantee for non-major applications from 26 weeks to 16 weeks. The draft regulations will need Parliamentary approval before they come into effect, and no clear timetable has been published for this to take place.

The Government claims that these fee increases will provide much needed additional resourcing and financial sustainability for local planning authorities, albeit that there is no mechanism for formally ring-fencing the income from planning fees for investment in local planning authority planning services. Despite this absence, the Government states that it expects that local planning authorities protect at least the income from the planning fee increase to directly support increased resourcing for planning departments. Whether that happens in reality, we wouldn’t wish to speculate.