Appealing a levy chargeable amount to the valuation office

If your liability notice shows a chargeable amount you think is wrong, you have 28 days to ask the collecting authority to review it and 60 days from the notice to appeal to an appointed person through the Valuation Office Agency. Both clocks run from the liability notice, not from the planning permission, and an appeal on the chargeable amount cannot be made once work has started on site. Miss either deadline and the figure stands however plainly it is miscalculated.

Ask the authority to review first

Regulation 113 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 gives you a right to request a review of the calculation by the collecting authority. The request must be made within 28 days of the liability notice being issued, in writing, and it should set out the error rather than simply disputing the total.

The authority must review the calculation and notify you of the outcome, and the review has to be carried out by someone senior to the person who did the original calculation. Many errors are resolved here, because most of them are arithmetical or come from a floorspace figure read off the wrong drawing.

Do the review request properly even if you expect to appeal. The appeal to the appointed person is only available where a review has been requested, so skipping it closes the door.

The grounds that can be argued

The appeal is about the calculation, not the policy. Grounds that work are the ones where the authority has applied the charging schedule incorrectly or used the wrong inputs.

• The gross internal area of the chargeable development has been measured wrongly, including mezzanines, plant rooms or external areas that should not count.
• The floorspace of existing buildings to be demolished or retained has not been deducted when it should have been.
• The existing building failed or met the lawful use test and the authority has reached the wrong conclusion on it.
• The wrong rate from the charging schedule has been applied, for example a residential rate to a use that is not residential, or the wrong charging zone.
• The indexation figure applied is for the wrong year.
• Phasing has been ignored, so a single charge has been raised on a permission that was expressed in phases.

The deduction for existing floorspace is where most money sits. A building only counts if it has been in lawful use for a continuous period of at least six months within the three years before the development is permitted, and that is a factual question you can win with utility bills, business rates records, photographs and tenancy documents.

Escalating to the appointed person

If the review does not fix it, the appeal goes to a valuer appointed through the Valuation Office Agency, not to the Planning Inspectorate. That is the structural oddity of the system, and it follows from the fact that the dispute is about measurement and valuation rather than planning judgement.

The appeal must be lodged within 60 days of the date of the liability notice. The appointed person considers the written case, may seek further information and issues a decision that binds the collecting authority. There is no hearing in the ordinary case.

Check the current deadline for your particular ground against the Regulations before you rely on a summary, because the periods differ and several were amended after 2010.

Evidence that persuades a valuer

An appointed person is reading a measurement dispute. Give them measurements.

Submit a schedule of areas by floor and by use, cross-referenced to the approved drawings by drawing number and revision, with the measurement convention stated. Where the dispute is about existing floorspace, provide a separate schedule for the existing building and the evidence of its lawful use over the relevant period, dated.

Keep the planning merits out of it. Arguments that the levy makes the scheme unviable, that the authority has spent previous receipts badly, or that the charging schedule rate is too high belong nowhere in this appeal. Viability is dealt with through the section 106 negotiation and, where relevant, a Viability Assessment, and our note on independent review of a viability appraisal explains how that runs.

One practical point. Submit the appeal on the facts you can prove now rather than waiting for a better document, because the 60 day period will not be extended while you look for it.

Surcharges, relief and start dates

Surcharges are separate appeals and they go to the Planning Inspectorate rather than the Valuation Office Agency. The common ones are for failing to submit an assumption of liability notice, failing to serve the statutory notice telling the council when work will start, and failing to provide requested information.

That start notice surcharge is the one that catches self-builders hardest, because beginning work without serving it can cost the exemption entirely. Serve it, keep the acknowledgement, and do not treat the planning permission as authority to begin.

Relief and exemption refusals, including the self-build exemption and the exemption for residential annexes and extensions, are appealed to an appointed person. Each has its own procedural conditions, and the exemptions are forfeited by failures of process as readily as by failures of substance.

What cannot be appealed at all

Three things are outside this route entirely.

The rates in the charging schedule cannot be challenged through a levy appeal. They are tested at examination when the schedule is prepared, and after adoption the only challenge is judicial review within the usual short time limit.

The grant of permission and the conditions attached to it are not reviewable here. Nor is the authority's decision on how receipts are spent, which is reported through the annual infrastructure funding statement.

Instalment policies sit outside the appeal too. Where an authority operates one, late payment of an instalment can trigger the loss of the instalment facility and interest on the balance, and the answer to that is a payment plan agreed in advance rather than a challenge after the event.

And once work has started on site, the chargeable amount appeal is gone. That is the single most expensive mistake in this part of the system. If the figure looks wrong, deal with it before anything happens on site, even if the programme suffers for a few weeks. Where the dispute is bound up with the wider obligations package, our note on viability appraisal outputs and what to submit covers how the two sit together.

This is general guidance, not legal advice, and you should check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. See PlanScope pricing if you want the supporting documents drafted while you deal with the levy. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.