Planning budget lines a lender will expect to see

A lender reading your appraisal is looking for one thing in the planning section: whether the planning appraisal budget lines are specific enough to be tested. A single figure labelled "planning" covering fees, consultants, surveys, obligations and levy tells them nothing, and it usually tells them the applicant has not yet priced the consent.

Split it into separate lines with separate sources, and the conversation changes. Here is the structure that stands up, and the places where appraisals come in short.

How planning costs appear in an appraisal

In a residual appraisal the gross development value sits at the top, the costs and profit come off, and what remains is what you can pay for the land. Planning costs sit in the cost stack as fees and as outflows secured by the consent.

Three characteristics make them awkward. They are spent before any value is created, so they carry finance cost across the longest part of the programme. Some of them are contingent, since you do not know the levy liability or the obligations until the decision. And a part of them is irrecoverable on a refusal, which is the risk the lender is actually pricing.

So present them in programme order, not in alphabetical order. A lender wants to see what is spent pre-submission, what during determination, and what falls due on implementation.

Separating fees, reports and consents

Four headings cover almost everything, and keeping them apart is the whole point.

Statutory application fees. The planning application fee set by the national fee regulations, pre-application advice charges set by each authority's published schedule, fees for the discharge of conditions by request, and the fee for any non-material amendment or section 73 application. Fees are indexed and the schedules change, so take the current figures from the published schedule rather than from last year's appraisal.

Professional fees. The planning consultant or agent, the architect through to planning stage, and the project manager's time. Where the agent is on a fixed fee, the scope matters, and what a planning agent's fixed fee usually includes is a useful cross-check against what you have allowed.

Technical reports and surveys. Each one named, with its own figure. Transport, ecology and the statutory metric, arboriculture, heritage, acoustics, contamination, drainage, daylight, energy and whole life carbon where required. Seasonal surveys get their own note, because an ecology window missed in May costs a year rather than a fee.

Consent costs. Legal fees on the planning obligation, the authority's legal costs which you pay, monitoring fees, highway agreement fees and bonds, and the cost of any separate consent such as listed building consent or a licence.

Allowances for conditions and obligations

Conditions cost money and appraisals treat them as free. They are not.

Conditions to be discharged before work starts deserve a separate schedule. The lender cares about them because they sit between the consent and the first drawdown, and a condition requiring an archaeological evaluation before any works start can hold a site for a season.

Biodiversity net gain is the newest line and the one most often wrong. The 10 per cent gain and the 30 year management and monitoring obligation both have costs, and off-site provision carries a purchase price plus legal and registration work. The analysis in budgeting an off-site biodiversity credit purchase is worth reading before you put a round number in.

The levy as a separate line

Community Infrastructure Levy liability belongs on its own line, never inside a planning fees total.

Calculate it from the charging authority's adopted schedule, by rate and by use, applied to the chargeable floorspace with the existing building deduction where you qualify for it. Rates are indexed annually, so use the current indexation rather than the rate as adopted.

Three points a lender will check.

• Whether any relief or exemption is claimed, and whether the conditions for it survive the transaction.
• When the liability falls due, since the instalment policy varies by authority and the first payment can land before any income.
• Whether the liability notice and the notice of the start of development have been served correctly, because getting that wrong removes instalment rights and triggers surcharges.

Where the authority has not adopted a levy, the contributions come through the planning obligation instead, and the appraisal should say so rather than leaving the line blank.

Contingency against named risks

A flat 5 per cent planning contingency is a number that means nothing. Name the risks instead and price each one.

1. One round of amended plans and the re-consultation that follows.
2. An extension of time that pushes the decision beyond the finance assumption.
3. A refusal and an appeal, costed as written representations or as a hearing, with the fee for the appeal and the professional time.
4. A survey season missed, with the holding cost of the delay rather than the survey fee.
5. A statutory consultee objection requiring new technical work, most often from the lead local flood authority or the highway authority.
6. A viability negotiation requiring a formal appraisal, which brings its own cost and a review mechanism.

That last one compounds. A Viability Assessment prepared to the standard an authority's own consultant will test is not an inexpensive document, and it often arrives with a late stage review mechanism attached, so the appraisal has to carry both the cost of the assessment and the contingent liability the review creates. The mechanics are set out in budgeting a viability appraisal and the review it triggers.

Evidence a lender asks for

At credit stage the planning pack that gets asked for is fairly consistent.

The decision notice with the full list of conditions. A schedule showing each condition, whether it is to be discharged before work starts, who discharges it and what it costs. The completed section 106 agreement with a table of obligations, triggers and indexation. The CIL liability notice and your calculation. Confirmation that the period for judicial review has expired, which runs for six weeks from the decision. The approved biodiversity gain plan or the route to it. And a statement of what remains outstanding with dates.

Two documents carry more weight than their length suggests. The condition schedule, because it converts the consent into a programme. And a short note on the implementation position, meaning what has been done to start the development lawfully and whether the permission is at risk of expiry.

Where appraisals usually understate

The pattern repeats across sites.

Condition discharge is treated as administration rather than as a work package with fees and technical input. Section 106 monitoring fees are left out entirely. Utility diversion quotations are taken as budget figures months before the statutory undertaker confirms anything. Highway bonds are omitted because they are returnable, which ignores the cost of providing them. Biodiversity obligations are priced as a one-off rather than as a 30 year commitment. And the finance cost of the planning period is calculated on an eight week determination that nobody has achieved on a major application.

The honest uncertainty is the obligations. Until heads of terms are agreed you are estimating, and a figure taken from a comparable scheme in the same authority is better evidence than a percentage of build cost. Ask the authority early what it will seek, and record the answer in the appraisal as the source.

Price the reports line by line before you commit to the land. PlanScope pricing gives a fixed figure per report that you can put in the appraisal, which is more useful at this stage than a range.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.