Planning performance agreement fees: what to negotiate

A planning performance agreement is a service contract, and PPA fee negotiation works the way any other professional services negotiation does. The council is selling officer time and a programme. You are buying certainty about who does what and when. What you cannot buy, and what no properly drafted agreement will offer, is any commitment about the outcome, because an authority cannot fetter its discretion to determine an application on its merits.

How councils build the charge

The power to charge sits in section 93 of the Local Government Act 2003, which allows a local authority to charge for a discretionary service on a cost recovery basis. The charge must not exceed the cost of providing the service, taken over a period.

In practice that means the council builds the number from officer time. A planning officer at a stated hourly or daily rate, a team leader or manager for oversight, and specialist officers where the scheme needs them: conservation, urban design, ecology, trees, environmental health, highways, housing, viability, and the legal team for any section 106 work.

Ask for the build-up. A council quoting a single figure for a major scheme should be able to show the hours and grades behind it, and where it cannot, the number is a guess. The build-up is also the thing you negotiate against, because arguing about the total gets nowhere while arguing about whether the scheme really needs forty hours of urban design input gets somewhere.

Rates themselves are usually fixed by the council's published schedule and are not negotiable. Volumes are.

Fixed fee against time charged

Most authorities offer one of two structures, and the choice matters more than the headline figure.

A fixed fee gives budget certainty and transfers the overrun risk to the council. It suits schemes where the scope is clear: a known number of meetings, a defined set of technical topics, a single application.

Time charged against an estimate suits schemes where the scope is still uncertain, and it can cost less where the application runs smoothly. It needs three protections written in: a cap above which no further charge arises without your written agreement, monthly reporting of time spent by grade, and a right to stop.

Whichever structure you choose, pin the deliverables. A PPA that promises meetings but not written outputs leaves you with a record of conversations and nothing to submit.

Which specialist costs sit outside the fee

This is where budgets are broken, so list it explicitly in the agreement.

Statutory consultees charge separately for pre-application engagement in some cases, and their programmes are their own. An independent viability review is almost always outside the PPA and paid by the applicant on top, sometimes with the reviewer appointed by the council. Design review panel fees are normally separate. Legal costs for drafting and completing a section 106 agreement are separate, and are usually covered by an undertaking to pay the council's reasonable legal costs whether or not permission is granted.

Where a Viability Assessment is part of the submission, agree at the outset who appoints the reviewer, what they are asked to test, and what the fee cap is. Discovering that the review will cost several thousand pounds after the appraisal is submitted is a poor negotiating position.

The other omission worth catching is officer time on discharge of conditions after permission. Some PPAs cover it, most do not, and on a large scheme condition discharge is a substantial workload.

Payment milestones that follow the work

Tie payment to deliverables, not to dates. A schedule that pays on signature, on the pre-application response, on validation and on committee report is aligned. A schedule that pays quarterly regardless of progress is not.

A workable pattern on a major application is four stages. An initial payment on signature covering the scoping meeting and the project plan. A second on delivery of the written pre-application advice. A third on validation of the application. A fourth on the committee report or delegated decision, held back until the report exists.

Hold something back. A final tranche of ten to twenty per cent payable on the decision, whatever the decision is, keeps attention on the programme without implying that payment depends on approval. Make that neutrality explicit in the drafting.

Withdrawal, refunds and the planning guarantee

Ask what happens if you withdraw. Many draft agreements are silent, which in practice means the council keeps what it has been paid. Negotiate a clause providing for repayment of any sum paid in advance for work not yet done, less reasonable costs already committed.

There is a second point that applicants routinely miss. The planning guarantee provides for the application fee to be refunded where a major application is not determined within the extended statutory period. Where a PPA or an agreed extension of time is in place, that refund does not arise, because you have agreed a different timetable. So the agreement should be worth what the guarantee was worth: a longer but firmly committed programme, with named officers and dates, rather than an open-ended extension.

Read the termination clause both ways. If the council cannot resource the scheme it agreed to resource, you want the right to stop paying and to have the balance returned.

Recording variations to the agreed sum

Schemes change. The unit count moves, an EIA screening opinion comes back positive, a new consultee joins. Each of those changes the officer input, and the agreement should say how the fee is adjusted.

Use a short change control clause: any variation to scope or fee to be agreed in writing by both parties before the additional work starts, with a note of the reason and the revised sum. Then actually use it. Most disputes about PPA fees come from work done informally on the assumption that someone would sort out the paperwork later.

Keep a simple log alongside the agreement recording meetings held, officers attending, outputs received and sums paid. It takes minutes to maintain and settles arguments in seconds.

One honest assessment. A PPA is worth paying for where the council has the resource and the will to run a programme, and worth very little where it does not. Ask other applicants in the area what they got, ask the council how many PPAs it currently runs and who would lead yours, and be prepared to decline. Budget the drafting work separately: PlanScope pricing covers the supporting documents at £50 per report, or £150 per month on the Professional tier for agents running several schemes, and the full report list shows what a major submission usually contains.

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. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your scheme is likely to need.