Planning fees: reading the schedule and the free go
Planning fees in England come from one national schedule. Here is how the categories work, which applications carry no fee, and when a second application is free.
The planning application fee for householder work in England comes from one set of national regulations, and your council has no power to raise or lower it. All it can do is decline to register the application until the correct amount has arrived. That is where most fee trouble starts. A homeowner pays the flat householder rate for a rear extension, the case officer notices the drawings also show a new outbuilding on land outside the residential curtilage, and the eight-week clock never begins because the application was never valid.
Fees are worth ten minutes of attention before you submit, because they are one of the few parts of the system with a published, checkable answer.
Where the figures actually come from
The governing instrument is the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, amended many times since. Schedule 1 to those regulations sets out categories of development and the fee attached to each. Planning Practice Guidance summarises the position, and the Planning Portal runs a fee calculator that applies the schedule to your description of development.
Use the calculator, then sanity-check the answer against the category you think you are in. The calculator is only as good as the answers you feed it.
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own fees under separate regulations, so figures quoted for England do not carry across the border.
How the schedule is built up
The schedule works by category rather than by application form. Some categories are a single flat sum. Others multiply a unit rate by the number of dwellings or by floorspace, then apply a cap once the scheme passes a stated size.
| Application type | How the fee is worked out |
|---|---|
| Householder alterations or extensions to one dwelling | Single flat fee |
| New dwellings (outline, full or reserved matters) | Rate per dwelling, with a cap on large schemes |
| Other buildings, including commercial floorspace | Rate per 75 m2 of gross floor space created, with a cap |
| Change of use with no new floorspace | Flat fee |
| Erection of agricultural buildings | Rate per 75 m2 above a stated floor area, with a cap |
| Prior approval under the GPDO | Flat fee, varying by class |
| Discharge of conditions | Flat fee per request, with a lower rate for householder permissions |
Outline applications are charged on site area rather than on units, which catches people out when a large field is submitted for a handful of houses. Reserved matters applications then attract a further fee, so an outline route costs more in total than a single full application. That is a real trade-off, not an accounting quirk.
Applications that carry no fee
A short list of application types are free by regulation. Listed building consent carries no fee at all, which surprises owners who assume the most tightly controlled consent must be the dearest one. Applications for works to a tree protected by a Tree Preservation Order, and notifications of works to trees in a conservation area, are also free.
Two exemptions matter more often than people expect. Where planning permission is needed only because an Article 4 direction has removed permitted development rights, or because a condition on an earlier permission withdrew them, no fee is payable. If you live in a conservation area with an Article 4 direction covering front extensions, windows or hardstanding, check whether your application falls into that category before paying.
The second is disability-related. Work carried out solely to give a disabled person access to a building, or to improve their safety, health or comfort at a dwelling, is exempt.
The second application you do not pay for
The concession usually called the free go allows one further application on the same site without a fee. Broadly, the later application must be made by the same applicant, on the same site, for development of the same character or description as the earlier one, and it must be submitted within twelve months of the decision on the earlier application. Where the first application was withdrawn, the twelve months runs from the date the council received it.
The conditions are stricter than the folklore suggests:
- Only one free application follows any given fee-paying application. You cannot chain them.
- The earlier application must itself have been charged a fee. A free go cannot follow a free go.
- The description of development must be broadly the same. Adding a storey to a scheme that was refused as a single-storey extension is unlikely to qualify.
- The site must be the same. Extending the red line to take in a neighbour's strip usually breaks the concession.
Councils apply the twelve-month test from their own records, so if the concession matters to your budget, say so in the covering note and give the earlier reference number. Do not assume the validation officer will spot it.
Indexation and finding today's number
Fees were uplifted across the board in December 2023, and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 introduced a mechanism for annual indexation, which has applied from April onwards in subsequent years. Any figure printed in a blog article, a council leaflet or an old agent's letter goes stale quickly. Check the current schedule on the Planning Portal fee calculator or in the amended regulations on the day you submit.
Some councils charge separately for services that sit outside the national schedule. Pre-application advice, planning performance agreements and monitoring of section 106 obligations are discretionary services, and the charges for them are local and published locally.
Conditions, amendments and certificates
Post-decision applications have their own rates. An application under section 73 to vary or remove a condition, and one under section 96A for a non-material amendment, each carry a flat fee, with the section 96A fee lower for householder permissions than for other development.
Discharge of conditions is charged per request rather than per condition, so bundling several conditions into one submission costs less than drip-feeding them. Officers generally prefer it too.
Lawful development certificates split in two. A certificate for an existing use or operation is charged at the same rate as an application for permission for that development. A certificate for a proposed use is charged at half that rate. Since a certificate under section 192 is the only formal way to confirm that planned works are lawful, that half rate is money well spent when a sale or a mortgage depends on the answer.
What a wrong fee does to your eight weeks
An application is not valid until the fee, the forms, the ownership certificate and the local validation requirements are all in order. Until then it sits unregistered. The determination period does not run, the consultation period does not start, and nothing you do afterwards recovers the lost weeks.
Underpayment is the common failure. It usually comes from describing the development too narrowly, splitting a scheme across categories, or forgetting that a change of use combined with building work can attract the higher of the two applicable fees rather than the flat change-of-use rate.
Overpayment is less painful but still annoying. Councils refund it, eventually.
If the description of development is doing a lot of work in your fee calculation, get it right in the Planning Statement as well, so the form, the drawings and the supporting text all describe the same thing. Where you are unsure which category applies, ring the validation team before you submit rather than after. They answer that question all day.
For anything beyond a single extension, work out early which supporting documents the council expects, because those costs usually dwarf the application fee itself. The full list of report types is a reasonable starting point, and PlanScope's own pricing sets out what a drafted report costs alongside them.
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.
Frequently asked questions
Who sets the planning application fee?
Fees in England are set by the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, as amended. Councils have no discretion to raise or lower them for a given category of development. They can charge separately for discretionary services such as pre-application advice, because those sit outside the national schedule entirely.
Is listed building consent free?
Yes. An application for listed building consent carries no fee under the fees regulations. If your project needs both listed building consent and planning permission, you pay only the planning fee, and you submit two applications. The absence of a fee says nothing about how demanding the consent is to obtain.
How long do I have to use the free go?
Broadly, the further application must be submitted within twelve months of the decision on the earlier fee-paying application, or within twelve months of the date the council received it where the earlier application was withdrawn. Only one free application follows any one fee-paying application, and the site and description of development must be broadly the same.
Do I pay a fee if an Article 4 direction removed my permitted development rights?
No fee is payable where planning permission is required only because an Article 4 direction, or a condition on an earlier permission, withdrew permitted development rights that would otherwise have covered the work. Flag the direction in your covering note, because validation staff will not always identify it from the address alone.
What happens if I pay the wrong amount?
The application is invalid until the correct fee is received, so the council will not register it and the statutory determination period does not begin. Underpayments usually come from an inaccurate description of development. Overpayments are refunded, but only after the council has processed the correction, which takes time you may not have.
Sources and further reading
This article is general guidance about the planning system in England and, where stated, the rest of the UK. It is not legal or professional advice. Check your local planning authority’s validation requirements and take professional advice for your specific site.