Planning performance agreements and what they commit you to

A planning performance agreement is a voluntary written programme, signed by an applicant and a local planning authority, that sets out how a major or complex planning application will be run: who is doing what, by when, and with how much officer resource on each side. It buys structure and access. It does not buy a decision, it cannot shorten the statutory determination period on its own, and no clause in it can oblige the council to grant permission. For a developer scoping a scheme of 100 homes or a mixed-use block, the practical value is that a 13-week statutory period stops being a black box and becomes a dated schedule both sides have put their names to.

Authorities offer them under their general power to charge for discretionary services in section 93 of the Local Government Act 2003. That same power sits behind pre-application advice, and the two services are usually sold together, with the agreement picking up where the pre-application response ends.

What both sides are signing up to

The applicant side of the bargain is usually the harder one. You are agreeing to submit a defined document list, at a defined quality, on a defined date, and to attend meetings with people who can make decisions. Authorities have learned to write in a clause that suspends the timetable if the submission is short of what was listed, because a half-finished transport assessment stalls every consultee behind it.

The authority side commits to a named case officer, a named senior sign-off, dates for internal consultation, dates for draft heads of terms, and a target committee cycle. Where the scheme touches highways, drainage or archaeology, the agreement should name the officers in those teams as well. A programme that only binds the planning department will drift the first time it hits the county highways queue.

Neither side is agreeing to the answer. That distinction matters more than it sounds. An authority that promised a recommendation in advance would be fettering its own discretion, and the agreement would be worthless at judicial review. What the council can promise is process: that it will tell you its position on affordable housing by a date, that it will circulate draft conditions before committee, and that officers will attend design review.

What goes into the document

Most published templates run to a similar shape. A description of the site and the proposal. A list of the parties, including any consultee who has agreed to be bound. A document schedule. A milestone programme. A resourcing statement with the hours each side expects to spend. A charging schedule. A governance section explaining how the programme is reviewed and varied. And a short section on confidentiality, which matters if the scheme is not yet public.

The document schedule is the part worth arguing about. Get the evidence base listed by name rather than by theme, because "ecology information" and "a preliminary ecological appraisal plus bat emergence surveys across three visits" are different commitments with different lead times. If you are unsure which reports the site will pull in, work from the full list of report types at the full list of report types and strike out what does not apply.

Survey seasons are the usual critical path, not officer availability. Bat emergence surveys sit between May and September. Great crested newt environmental DNA sampling runs from 15 April to 30 June. A programme that assumes an autumn submission and a spring survey has a five-month gap in it that no amount of officer resource can close.

How the officer time is charged

Charges are set locally and published. The common structure is an hourly rate by officer grade, multiplied by an estimate of hours, invoiced in stages against the milestones. Some authorities price by scheme size band instead. Specialist input that the council has to buy in, such as viability review or daylight modelling, is normally passed through at cost and is often the largest single line.

Ask for three things before signing. The current published scale of charges, since it is usually revised each April. A written statement of what happens to the fee if the scheme is withdrawn part way through. And confirmation of whether the charge is separate from the statutory application fee, which it always is.

The planning guarantee, under which an application fee becomes refundable if a major application is not determined within 26 weeks, interacts with agreed timetables. The interaction has been changed more than once by amendments to the fees regulations, so check the version in force rather than relying on a summary.

The statutory clock and the agreed clock

The statutory determination period for a major application is 13 weeks from validation, or 16 weeks where the development is subject to environmental impact assessment. Signing a performance agreement does not change that. What changes it is a written agreement on a longer period between the applicant and the authority, which the Development Management Procedure Order permits and which nearly every performance agreement contains as a separate clause.

The consequence is that you give up the early right to appeal for non-determination in exchange for the programme. Most applicants on major schemes take that trade willingly. Read that clause anyway, because your appeal right revives on the agreed end date and not before.

Where a programme slips inside the agreed period, the remedy is the review mechanism rather than the Planning Inspectorate. Where it slips past the agreed end date, you have a choice, and the commercial answer usually depends on whether the officer report is nearly written.

Where an agreement earns its fee and where it does not

It earns its fee on schemes with many moving parts: several statutory consultees, a section 106 package with viability evidence, a phased build-out, or a design that needs two rounds of review. The value is in forcing the section 106 drafting to start before the officer report rather than after it, which is where large applications most often lose two months.

It earns much less on a straightforward 15-unit scheme in an allocated site with no constraints. There the statutory period is already close to what the officer needs, and the charge buys a calendar you could have kept yourself.

It earns nothing at all on an application whose real problem is policy. If the principle of development is contrary to the adopted plan and there is no credible case on the balance, a timetable simply sets a date for the refusal. Spend the money on the policy case instead.

Keeping the agreement honest during determination

Run it like any other project document. Fortnightly or monthly progress calls, a shared action log, and a written note after each meeting that records what the authority said about each issue. That note becomes evidence later if the officer report takes a different line, and it also shortens the drafting of your own statement of case if the scheme goes to appeal.

Track the consultee responses against the programme separately. Consultees who did not sign are not bound by the dates, so their responses are the most common source of slippage, and the case officer is the only person who can chase them effectively.

Keep the agreement live after the decision too. Discharge of conditions, reserved matters submissions and the first phase of a section 106 trigger all land on the same team. Some authorities will extend the programme to cover post-decision work for an additional charge, which avoids the awkward restart where you are back in the general queue. If a drawing needs a small correction after consent, a non-material amendment is usually faster than reopening the whole permission, and where the council goes quiet on a condition submission the deemed discharge route is worth understanding in advance.

An illustrative programme

Illustrative example, for a 180-home mixed-use scheme with a listed building on the boundary. Months one to three: pre-application meetings, design review, heritage and transport scoping. Month three: sign the agreement, with the surveys already commissioned. Months four to eight: ecology field season, viability evidence, drainage design, two design review sessions. Month nine: submission and validation. Months ten to twelve: consultation, consultee responses, draft heads of terms. Months thirteen and fourteen: officer report, section 106 engrossment, committee. The figures are for illustration only and the shape of any real programme depends on the site.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a site is likely to need before you agree a document schedule, so the programme is built on a realistic list. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to start.

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.