Fee refunds where a council fails to determine in time

If a local planning authority does not determine your application within 26 weeks of the date it was made valid, the planning fee has to be refunded. The provision sits in regulation 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, it is automatic in principle, and it is quietly switched off the moment you sign an extension of time.

That last point is the one that costs agents money. Most refunds are lost by agreement, not by argument.

The statutory refund provision

Regulation 9A, usually called the planning guarantee, requires the authority to refund the fee paid where it fails to determine the application within the prescribed period. The obligation is on the authority, and it arises without the applicant having to appeal or litigate.

The guarantee has been narrowed since it was introduced. The amendments made in December 2023, alongside the fee uplift and the introduction of annual indexation from 1 April, changed which applications it covers. Read the current consolidated text of regulation 9A on legislation.gov.uk before assuming a particular application qualifies, and pay attention to how the regulations treat major applications.

What the regulation refunds is the planning fee itself. It does not touch the Planning Portal service charge, your own fees, the cost of the surveys that went in with the application, or any loss caused by the delay.

The period that must pass

The clock starts on the date the application is made valid, not the date it was submitted, and not the date the council got round to registering it. Those three dates can be weeks apart on a busy authority, which is why the validation email matters more than the submission receipt.

The longstop is 26 weeks. That sits well beyond the ordinary determination periods in article 34 of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, which are eight weeks for most minor applications, 13 weeks for major development and 16 weeks for applications accompanied by an environmental statement.

How extensions of time affect entitlement

An extension of time agreed in writing under article 34 replaces the statutory determination period. Where a longer period has been agreed, the authority is determining within time, and the refund provision does not operate in the way it otherwise would.

This is where the practical advice sits. Councils ask for extensions routinely, often by a one-line email in week seven, and agents sign them because the alternative feels confrontational. Before you agree, ask three questions: what specifically is outstanding, who is it with, and what date will it be resolved. An extension to a fixed date with a named outstanding consultee is a reasonable commercial bargain. An open-ended extension "to allow further consideration" gives away both the refund and the non-determination appeal right for nothing.

If you do agree, agree once and put a date on it. Rolling extensions are how applications reach 40 weeks.

Claiming the refund in practice

There is no form and no portal button. Write to the authority, and keep it short and factual.

1. Identify the application by reference and site address, and state the validation date with the evidence attached.
2. State the date on which 26 weeks expired and confirm the application remained undetermined on that date.
3. Confirm whether any extension of time was agreed, and if one was, attach the correspondence and state the agreed date.
4. Quote regulation 9A of the 2012 Regulations and ask for the refund to be processed to the original payer.
5. Ask for a named contact in the finance team and a date for the payment.

Send it to the case officer and copy the development management manager. If nothing happens within a month, the council's corporate complaints procedure is the next step, and after that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. Judicial review is available in principle and almost never proportionate for a sum of this size.

Keep the tone neutral. You will be dealing with the same authority next month, and a claim made politely and correctly is not treated as an attack.

Refund or appeal

These are different remedies with different objectives, and the choice is commercial rather than legal.

A non-determination appeal under section 78 takes the decision away from the council and gives it to an inspector. It removes any prospect of negotiating a permission with conditions the client can live with, it takes months, and the council will defend the position it had reached. It makes sense where the authority has effectively stopped engaging, or where a refusal is obviously coming and the delay is simply adding cost.

The refund claim leaves the application where it is. You get the fee back and the council carries on determining. For most schemes that is the better outcome, because the permission is worth far more than the fee.

There is a hybrid worth remembering. Claiming the refund does not prevent you appealing later, and appealing does not extinguish a refund entitlement that has already arisen. Take the sequencing advice that fits the client's programme, not the one that feels most satisfying.

Where delay has already caused cost, our note on costs awards at appeal explains the separate and much harder test that applies to recovering those.

Records to keep during determination

Build the file as you go, because reconstructing it six months later is unpleasant.

Keep the validation email or letter, every extension of time request and response, the dates any amended plans or additional documents were submitted, the consultee response dates visible on the public register, and a short note of each phone call with the officer including the date. A simple log at the front of the file is enough.

Amended plans are worth flagging separately. Where substantial changes are submitted mid-course, authorities sometimes treat the application as re-consulted and argue that the period should run afresh. The regulation ties the period to the original valid application, but you will have the argument more easily if the file shows exactly what was submitted and when.

Where the provision does not help

The guarantee applies to planning applications. It is not a general remedy for slow local government.

It does not cover prior approval applications under the General Permitted Development Order, which have their own deemed consent arrangements and shorter periods. It does not cover applications to discharge conditions, non-material amendments under section 96A, or listed building consent. And it does nothing about the commonest delay of all, which is a section 106 agreement sitting with a solicitor while the resolution to grant gathers dust.

For fee budgeting generally, our breakdown of what a householder planning application really costs and what drives the price of a Planning Statement set out where the money actually goes. If you are comparing the cost of drafting supporting documents in house against outsourcing them, PlanScope pricing is one free report, £50 per report, or £150 per month for the Professional tier aimed at architects, planning agents and consultants.

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