Fees where a site straddles two local authority areas

A planning application for a site in two local authority areas has to be made to each authority, because each can only determine development within its own area. The fee is the part people assume will double. It does not: the Fees Regulations 2012 contain a specific provision for applications relating to land in the area of more than one authority, so the fee is calculated for the development as a whole rather than charged twice over in full. Everything else does double.

Get written confirmation of the fee calculation from both validation teams before submitting. Fee regulations are amended regularly, the provision is easy to misapply, and an underpaid fee means an invalid application.

Why a cross boundary site needs parallel applications

The power to determine an application comes from section 70 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and is exercised by the local planning authority for the area. There is no mechanism for one authority to grant permission for development on land in another's area, and no joint application form.

So you submit the same application twice. Same description of development, same drawings, same red line covering the whole site, same supporting documents. Each authority determines the application so far as it relates to land in its area, and each issues its own decision notice.

The red line point catches people out. Both applications show the entire site, not the part in that authority's area. The blue line and the ownership certificates follow the same logic. If the two red lines differ, you have submitted two different applications and the decisions will not fit together.

A National Park authority is the local planning authority for its area, so a site crossing a National Park boundary is a cross boundary site even where the district council covers both sides for other purposes. The same goes for a development corporation area.

How the fee is handled under the regulations

Read the current Regulations rather than a precedent, and then confirm in writing. The structure to expect is a single calculation for the whole development, with the Regulations dealing with how the amount is handled between the authorities, rather than each authority levying a full fee on the whole scheme.

Three things to settle in that correspondence.

• The category of development and the figure that produces, since fees are nationally set and indexed, so take them from the current schedule.
• Which authority receives what, and whether either will accept a single payment and transfer a share.
• Whether either authority treats the fee as satisfied on the other's receipt, which affects the date each application becomes valid.

Where the authorities disagree with each other about the calculation, say so to both in the same email. That usually resolves it faster than two separate conversations, and it creates a record if the fee is later said to be wrong.

Which authority validates what

Each authority applies its own validation list, so the submission has to satisfy the union of both. One council's householder design guide checklist, the other's requirement for a particular drainage pro forma, both of them.

Build the document schedule as a table before you submit.

Then send the identical pack to both. Sending a reduced pack to the authority that does not ask for an item saves nothing and creates a discrepancy between two applications that are supposed to be the same.

Validation dates will differ. One authority will validate in three days and the other in three weeks, and from that point the two determination periods run independently.

Coordinating two determination periods

The statutory period is eight weeks for a minor application and 13 weeks for a major, running from validation. Two different validation dates mean two different target dates, and the authority that validated first will reach committee first.

That is the risk to manage. A resolution to grant from one authority before the other has consulted puts pressure on the second, and a refusal from one while the other is minded to grant leaves you with an unusable permission.

Four things help.

1. Agree an extension of time with the authority that validated first, taking its target date past the second authority's.
2. Ask both for the same committee cycle where committee determination is likely, and give them the dates.
3. Share each authority's consultation responses with the other, because statutory consultees sometimes respond to one and not the other.
4. Keep a single issues log covering both applications, and send updates to both case officers together.

Where the scheme is large enough to justify it, a planning performance agreement with each authority, written to a common programme, is the proper tool. What those cost and what they buy is covered in planning performance agreements and what you are paying for.

Conflicting officer views and how to manage them

Expect them. Two authorities with different adopted local plans will apply different policies to the same scheme, and a boundary rarely marks a change in the physical character of the land.

The substantive differences that arise most often are parking standards, affordable housing thresholds and tenure splits, open space requirements, and design guidance. Where the site is mostly in one area, the practical answer is usually to design to the stricter standard and explain that in both applications.

Make the policy argument explicitly. The Planning Statement should carry a section for each development plan, with the policies of both authorities addressed by number, and a short passage explaining how the scheme responds to the difference where one exists. Do not write one statement that silently applies one authority's policies to the whole site.

The duty to cooperate and the authorities' own cross boundary working arrangements are worth invoking politely at pre-application stage. Ask for a joint meeting. Many authorities will agree to one, and a single conversation in which both officers hear the same thing is worth several rounds of correspondence.

Conditions and obligations across a boundary

Each authority can only impose conditions on development within its area. Which means a condition requiring, say, the access to be constructed before occupation can be imposed by the authority whose area contains the access, and the other authority has to achieve the same control differently.

The usual tool is a negative condition in the Grampian form, preventing occupation of the part in authority B until the works in authority A have been carried out. That is lawful provided there is a reasonable prospect of the works happening, which there is where the other permission exists.

Planning obligations are more straightforward and more laborious. A single agreement with both authorities as parties is the clean solution, with the contributions split and each authority's covenants identified. Two separate agreements also work and are easier to negotiate but harder to administer. Either way, build time for it, since the drafting involves two legal teams, and the hidden costs are set out in section 106 costs beyond the contribution.

If one authority refuses, the appeal is against that decision alone. Two appeals can be lodged and asked to be heard together, and the route and its costs are compared in appeal route costs across written representations, hearings and inquiries.

Practical steps before you submit either application

Do these in order.

Confirm the boundary position from the published administrative boundary data rather than from an estate plan. Write to both authorities with a site plan and ask for confirmation that each agrees where the boundary falls and what proportion of the site sits in its area. Request both validation lists and build the combined schedule. Confirm the fee calculation in writing with both. Ask for a joint pre-application meeting. Then submit on the same day, to both, with identical packs.

Submitting on the same day is a small discipline that pays off for the next six months, because it keeps the two timetables as close together as the authorities' own processing allows.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice, and fee regulations and validation requirements change, so check the position with each local planning authority before relying on it.