The planning guarantee and the fee refund at 26 weeks

If a local planning authority has not determined your application 26 weeks after the date it was made valid, you are entitled to your fee back. The duty sits in the fee regulations rather than in the Act, it applies whatever the reason for the delay, and the application carries on regardless. You do not withdraw anything and you do not lose your place in the queue.

Two things disapply it. Development requiring environmental impact assessment is outside the guarantee altogether. And a written agreement extending the determination period takes the case outside it too, which is the sentence to remember.

Where the guarantee comes from

The planning guarantee was introduced as a policy commitment that no application should take more than a year, and it was given effect through an amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012. The mechanism is a refund duty on the authority rather than a sanction, and there is no separate application form for it.

It works alongside, not instead of, the appeal against non-determination under section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Those are different remedies with different timescales: the appeal right arises at the end of the statutory period of eight, thirteen or sixteen weeks, and the refund right at 26 weeks. You can have both, and exercising one does not forfeit the other.

The period that triggers the refund

Twenty-six weeks from the date the application was valid, not from the date it was submitted. That distinction costs applicants their refunds, because a pack submitted in March and validated in April starts the clock in April.

Record the validation date the moment the registration email arrives, and put week 26 in the diary alongside week 8 or 13. Most missed refunds are missed because nobody was counting.

The period runs on calendar weeks and does not pause. It does not stop for Christmas, for a committee cycle, for the officer's annual leave, or for the time an application spends waiting on a consultee. Those are all reasons an authority will offer, and none of them is in the regulations.

Extensions of time and their effect

An agreement in writing to extend the determination period takes the application outside the guarantee. That is why authorities ask for them, and it is a perfectly legitimate request that is also, for the applicant, a decision with a price attached.

So treat the extension request as a negotiation rather than an administrative formality. Ask what the extension is for, ask for a dated end point rather than an open-ended agreement, and ask what will have happened by that date. An extension to allow a named consultee response is reasonable. An extension because the case officer has a caseload is a request to fund the authority's resourcing out of your holding costs, so read what an extension of time really costs before you sign one.

An extension agreed after week 26 does not retrospectively remove a refund entitlement that has already arisen. An extension agreed at week 20 does prevent one arising.

Applications excluded from the guarantee

Development subject to environmental impact assessment is the main exclusion, which means the largest and slowest applications, where the refund would be worth most, are the ones it does not reach. That is a real weakness in the scheme rather than a drafting accident.

Beyond that, check the position on deemed applications, applications where the fee was never paid, and cases where the delay arises from the applicant's own amendments, because an authority will raise all three. Where you have submitted revised plans that triggered re-consultation, expect the authority to argue the clock should be treated differently, and be ready to point to the regulation rather than to fairness. The rules on re-consultation after amended plans matter here, because a re-consultation does not by itself restart the 26 weeks.

How to claim, and from whom

There is no form. Write to the authority's planning department, copied to the finance team where you have a contact, and set out five things:

1. The application reference and the description of development.
2. The date the application was made valid, with the registration notice attached.
3. Confirmation that 26 weeks have elapsed and that no written extension of the determination period was agreed.
4. Confirmation that the development is not subject to environmental impact assessment.
5. The fee paid, the payment reference, and the account for the refund.

Keep the tone administrative. This is not a complaint, and framing it as one invites a defensive response from someone who cannot authorise the payment anyway. Send it by email and by post where the sum is large, because refund correspondence has a habit of disappearing between two departments that do not share a case management system.

If nothing happens within a month, escalate through the corporate complaints procedure rather than through the case officer. If that fails, the local authority ombudsman route addresses the failure to refund as maladministration, though it is slow.

Whether to claim or keep negotiating

Here is the practical tension. Claiming the refund is an entitlement, but it lands on the desk of a service that is deciding your application, and some agents worry about the relationship.

My own view is that the worry is overstated on a straightforward claim and justified on a marginal one. A refund claim on an application that has plainly stalled, where the officer has stopped responding, costs you nothing in goodwill you still had. A refund claim submitted in week 27 on an application where the officer is actively working towards a positive recommendation at the next committee is a different calculation, and on a fee of a few hundred pounds it is rarely worth it.

What is always worth doing is counting. Knowing that week 26 has passed changes the conversation about whether to agree a further extension, even if you never claim.

Recording the dates that matter

Keep one line per application: submission date, validation date, statutory expiry, any agreed extension and its end date, week 26, and the six month deadline for lodging a non-determination appeal after the statutory period expires. That last one catches people who wait too long while negotiating. Six months from the expiry of the statutory period, not six months from the point at which you gave up hope.

A Planning Statement that records the application history cleanly also makes this easier later, because the dates are already written down when you need them. The background to the scheme itself, and the policy commitment behind it, is set out in the note on the planning guarantee and getting your fee refunded.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Browse the 66 PlanScope report types to see which supporting documents a resubmission would need. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.