Planning fees and annual indexation: what changes each April

Planning application fee indexation means the figure you quoted a client in February may be wrong in April. Fees in England are set by regulations rather than by individual councils, and since 2025 they have been adjusted annually on 1 April in line with inflation, with a cap on how far they can rise in a single year. Nobody writes to tell you. The number simply changes, and an underpaid application is an invalid application.

For a practice sending out fee proposals months ahead of submission, the fix is a line in the proposal saying that the statutory fee is as published at the date of submission.

Where the fee schedule is set

The governing instrument is the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, as amended. Those regulations set the fee for every category of application, and a local planning authority has no discretion to charge more or less.

Amendments in December 2023 raised most fees substantially, with a larger uplift for major applications than for others, and introduced the annual indexation mechanism that now runs each April. Since then the schedule has moved every year.

Two things sit outside the regulations. Pre-application advice charges are set locally by each authority and published on its own website, so they vary widely and are not indexed by any national rule. And the Planning Portal charges its own service fee for applications submitted through it, on top of the statutory fee paid to the council.

How the annual uplift works

The mechanism is simple in outline. Fees are adjusted on 1 April each year by reference to the consumer prices index, with the increase capped so that a single year's rise cannot exceed a stated percentage. The adjusted figures are rounded and published.

What matters in practice is the date the fee is assessed. The fee due is the fee in force when the application is received by the authority, so an application submitted on 31 March pays the old figure and one submitted on 1 April pays the new one. Where an application is submitted on the last day of March and the authority logs it in April, expect a query.

Two habits save time. Recalculate the fee on the day you submit rather than on the day you prepared the forms. And where the application is large enough that the difference matters, submit before the end of March or budget for the uplift. Our note on planning fee indexation and how to budget for it goes into the budgeting side.

Categories calculated by floorspace or site area

Most fee disputes are arithmetic rather than principle. The regulations calculate fees in several different ways depending on the category, and applying the wrong method is the usual cause of an invalidation notice.

Gross floorspace means the floorspace created, measured externally, and it excludes existing floorspace that is retained. Site area for an outline application means the whole application site, not the developable part, which frequently catches schemes with large landscape buffers.

Where a proposal falls into two categories, the regulations generally require the higher fee rather than the sum of both, with exceptions. Check the specific provision rather than assuming.

Exemptions and reduced fees

Several exemptions are worth knowing because they come up regularly on domestic and small commercial work.

• No fee is payable where planning permission is needed only because permitted development rights were removed by an article 4 direction or by a condition on an earlier permission
• No fee is payable for an application for works to a listed building, since listed building consent carries no fee
• No fee is payable for consent to works to trees protected by a Tree Preservation Order, or for a notice about trees in a conservation area
• Applications for works to improve access or facilities for a disabled person at a dwelling are exempt
• Applications by a parish or community council attract a reduced fee under the regulations

Listed building consent being free is a common source of confusion, because a scheme needing both planning permission and listed building consent still pays the planning fee. Submit both and pay once.

Where a client is in doubt, the exemption has to be claimed and evidenced rather than assumed. An authority receiving an unpaid application without an explanation will treat it as invalid.

The repeat application concession

The concession commonly called the free go allowed one further application of broadly the same character on the same site within a period after a decision, without a further fee, subject to conditions about the applicant and the scale of change.

This has been curtailed by recent amendments, and authorities apply what remains of it differently. Before you promise a client a free resubmission, ask the authority in writing whether the concession applies to the specific case and keep the answer. The cost of being wrong is an invalid application and a lost place in the queue.

Where the concession does not apply, a section 73 application to vary a condition sometimes costs less than a fresh full application for the same change, and a section 96A non-material amendment costs less again where the change genuinely is non-material.

Fees for prior approval and discharge of conditions

Prior approval applications have their own fees, which differ by class. The larger householder extension route, the agricultural to residential classes and the commercial to residential classes are each priced separately, and several of them attract a higher fee than people expect because the authority is assessing defined matters rather than simply logging a notification.

Discharge of conditions carries a fee per request rather than per condition, with a lower figure for householder applications. Submitting conditions in batches therefore costs less than submitting them one at a time, though it also means waiting until every detail is ready.

Deemed applications arising from an enforcement appeal carry a fee equal to the fee that would have been payable on a normal application, and it is payable twice in some circumstances. That is a trap on retrospective work.

A well-run application programme budgets for these alongside the main fee, and for the technical reports the validation list requires. If you are pricing that document side, PlanScope pricing sets out the options, and the full report index shows what each report covers.

Checking the figure before you submit

1. Open the current fee schedule on gov.uk or the Planning Portal fee calculator on the day of submission.
2. Identify the category precisely, including whether the application is outline or full and whether floorspace or unit numbers drive the figure.
3. Check for an exemption and gather the evidence to claim it.
4. Add the Planning Portal service fee if submitting online.
5. Record the figure, the date and the source in the file, so that a later query can be answered in a minute.

Where the authority fails to determine an application in time, the planning guarantee may entitle you to a refund of the fee, and our note on getting your fee refunded sets out how that works. Follow fee changes and wider reform on the planning law timeline.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Fee figures change annually, 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.