How the planning application fee is calculated by category

Planning application fees in England are not negotiable and they are not set by your council. They come from a national schedule in the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, as amended, and the amount you pay depends on which fee category your proposal falls into. Get the category right and the arithmetic is simple. Get it wrong and the council will hold the application as invalid until the shortfall is paid, which costs you weeks at the front of the programme.

Where the figures come from

The 2012 Regulations set out the categories in a schedule, and the categories are defined by what you are building rather than by what you call the application. A council has no discretion to charge more or less, and no power to waive a fee except where the regulations allow it.

Fees were uplifted substantially in December 2023 and now move again each year, with the schedule adjusted annually from 1 April. That means any figure you find in a forum post, an old fee note or a printed guide is probably out of date. Always take the number from the current published schedule on the day you submit.

Councils publish their own fee pages, but the authoritative source is the national guidance on fees for planning applications and the regulations themselves. Where the two appear to conflict, the regulations win.

Householder, full and outline compared

These three cover most small schemes, and they are calculated in completely different ways.

A householder application, meaning alterations or extensions to a single existing dwelling and works within its curtilage, attracts a single flat fee regardless of the size of the extension. A 6 m² porch and a 60 m² wraparound extension cost the same to apply for. Where the works relate to two or more dwellings, a higher flat fee applies.

A full application for new dwellings is charged per dwelling created. The fee runs at a set amount for each unit up to a threshold of 50, after which a flat sum applies plus a smaller additional amount for each dwelling above 50, subject to an overall maximum. That structure matters if you are sitting at 49 or 51 units, though the fee is rarely the reason a scheme moves either side of that line.

An outline application is charged on site area, in units of 0.1 hectare up to 2.5 hectares, then a flat sum plus an additional amount for each 0.1 hectare above that, again subject to a maximum. Site area means the red line area on the location plan, so an over-generous red line costs real money. Draw it to what you actually need.

Floorspace-based fees for buildings other than dwellings

Commercial, industrial and other non-residential buildings are charged on gross floor space created, in bands. There is a nil-increase band for works that create no additional floorspace, then bands for the first tranche of new floorspace, and then an amount for each additional increment, with a cap at the top end.

Two points catch people out. Gross floor space means external measurements over all storeys, so a mezzanine counts even where it adds nothing to the footprint. And "created" means the increase over what exists, so a rebuild of the same volume on the same footprint can sit in the nil-increase band while a modest extension jumps a band.

Agricultural buildings, glasshouses, plant and machinery, car parks, waste operations and mineral working each have their own basis in the schedule. Plant and machinery and hardstanding are charged on site area in 0.1 hectare units rather than floorspace.

Applications that carry no fee, or a reduced one

The regulations exempt a short list, and it is worth checking whether you fall inside it before you pay.

• Listed building consent and consent for relevant demolition in a conservation area carry no fee.
• Works to a dwelling to improve access for a disabled resident, and works to a building open to the public for the same purpose, carry no fee.
• An application needed only because permitted development rights were withdrawn by an Article 4 direction, or removed by a condition on an earlier permission, carries no fee.
• A further application of the same character on the same site by the same applicant within 12 months of the earlier decision or withdrawal qualifies for the fee concession, once per permission.
• A certificate of lawfulness for a proposed use or development is charged at half the fee for the equivalent planning application, while one for an existing use is charged at the full rate.

Discharge of conditions, non-material amendments under section 96A and variations under section 73 all have their own flat fees, lower for householder development than for everything else. Prior approval applications under the General Permitted Development Order carry flat fees that vary by Part and Class, and they are considerably lower than the full application fee, which is part of why the prior approval routes are attractive for barn and office conversions.

Checking the figure before you submit

The fee that applies is the one in force when the application is submitted, so a scheme sent on 31 March and one sent on 1 April can attract different amounts. If you are close to the indexation date and the budget is tight, submit early.

Before you press send:

1. Identify the category from the regulations, not from the application form's title.
2. Measure the basis precisely: the number of dwellings, the gross floor space created, or the red line site area in hectares.
3. Apply the current published rate for that category.
4. Check whether a concession or exemption applies, and say so in your covering note if it does.
5. Allow for the Planning Portal's own service charge if you are submitting online, which is separate from the statutory fee.
6. Keep the payment reference with the application file, because validation queries usually come down to whether the right amount reached the right account.

Where a council says the fee is wrong, ask which category and which line of the schedule they are applying. Most disputes come from a difference of view about floorspace measurement or about whether a proposal is one application or two, and both are resolvable in a phone call if you have the numbers in front of you.

Budgeting the rest of the application

The application fee is usually the smallest line in the budget. The supporting documents are the larger one, and the list depends on the council's local validation checklist as much as on the national requirements. A Planning Statement and a design statement are standard for anything beyond a householder scheme, and constraints on the site add specialist reports on top.

Set the fee, the drawings, the reports and the professional review out as separate lines before you commit to a submission date. PlanScope's own pricing is one free report, £50 per report, or £150 per month for the Professional tier, which is a different order of cost from the statutory fee and should be budgeted separately. You can also work through the full list of report types to see what a scheme of your scale usually needs, or enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which of them a site with your constraints is likely to require.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Fee figures change annually and are set nationally, so check the current schedule with your local planning authority before relying on any number.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.