Planning Performance Agreements and when they pay
A planning performance agreement is a project management contract with the council, priced on officer time. It buys a timetable and named resources, not a recommendation.
A planning performance agreement cost is built from officer time, not from the scale of your development. The council estimates how many hours of case officer, urban designer, conservation officer, ecologist, transport officer, legal and management input the application will absorb, applies its published rates, and quotes. That is why two schemes of similar value can attract very different figures, and why asking for the build-up is a reasonable first question rather than an awkward one.
The power to charge comes from the general power of local authorities to charge for discretionary services. A performance agreement is discretionary. Neither side has to enter one, and neither side is obliged to agree the other's terms.
What a planning performance agreement actually contains
Strip away the branding and the document has six working parts.
A scope, describing the application or applications covered, and whether it extends to the discharge of conditions and the section 106 negotiation or stops at the decision.
A project plan with dated milestones: pre-application meetings, submission, validation, consultation, consultee responses, draft heads of terms, committee date, decision.
A resource schedule naming the officers assigned and the specialist input allowed for, sometimes with an hours allocation against each.
A meeting structure, typically a project board at intervals and topic meetings as required.
An information schedule setting out what the applicant will submit and by when, which is the part applicants read least carefully and breach most often.
And the fee, with payment stages and what happens if the scope changes.
The better agreements also record the risks each side has identified, which converts a pleasant document into a useful one.
Where the fee comes from
Ask for the calculation. A council charging properly can produce one, because the charge has to relate to the cost of providing the service.
The build-up usually runs by grade and by discipline. So many days of principal planner, so many of case officer, so many hours of conservation and urban design input, a legal allocation for the agreement and for the section 106, and a management overhead. Where the council has a corporate day rate published for planning services, the arithmetic is visible.
Things to probe in the quote:
- Whether pre-application advice fees already paid are credited against the agreement.
- Whether the section 106 legal costs sit inside the fee or are charged separately, since they are frequently both.
- Whether specialist input is an allowance or a cap, and what happens when it is exhausted.
- Whether the fee covers one committee date or any subsequent deferral.
- Whether the statutory application fee is included, which it will not be.
That last point matters for a budget line. The performance agreement fee, the statutory application fee, the pre-application fees, the section 106 legal costs and any monitoring sum are five separate numbers, and a scheme budget that shows one of them shows too few.
The timetable and what it replaces
The statutory determination periods are eight weeks for most minor applications, 13 weeks for majors and 16 weeks for applications requiring environmental impact assessment. A performance agreement almost always substitutes an agreed timetable for those, recorded as an extension of time agreed in writing under the development management procedure order.
That trade is the heart of the arrangement. The applicant gives up the right to appeal for non-determination at the end of the statutory period. The council gives up the argument that the application was too complex to decide on time, and takes on a dated programme it has signed.
Agreed extensions also affect how the council's performance is measured, since an application determined within an agreed extended period is not counted as late. Officers know this. It is not a reason to refuse an agreement, and it is a reason to make sure the timetable is negotiated properly rather than set at a length that suits only one party.
Put a review point in the timetable rather than a single end date. A programme with a checkpoint at consultation close survives a surprise consultee objection. One with only a committee date does not.
What a PPA does not buy
It does not buy a positive recommendation, a committee resolution, or any particular outcome. Councils say so in the agreement and they mean it. An officer who has been paid for their time is still an officer applying policy.
It does not bind the committee, which can and does depart from an officer recommendation regardless of any agreement reached during the process.
It does not bind statutory consultees, who are not parties to it. The highway authority, the Environment Agency and Natural England respond on their own timetables, and one of the more common causes of milestone slip is a consultee that never signed up to the dates.
And it does not make a weak application strong. A scheme that needs an evidence base it does not have will fail more expensively with a performance agreement than without one.
Where it earns its cost
The schemes where it repays the fee share a profile: many interacting technical issues, several consultees, a long evidence base, an internal deadline that has money attached to it, and a council that is short of capacity in the relevant discipline.
On that kind of scheme the agreement buys three things worth paying for. Named officers who hold the file rather than a rotating queue. A forum where a problem raised by a consultee can be resolved in a meeting instead of by three rounds of email. And a date the council has committed to, which lets you programme funding, contractor procurement and land payments against something firmer than hope.
It earns nothing on a small application with one issue. It earns nothing where the obstacle is political rather than technical, because officer resource does not change how members vote. And it earns little where the applicant cannot meet their own side of the information schedule, which is more common than the industry admits.
One honest uncertainty. There is no reliable way to know in advance whether a particular council will deliver on its timetable, and past performance on your own previous applications is the best evidence available. Ask other applicants working in the borough.
When the milestones slip
They will. The question is what the agreement says happens next.
Most agreements provide for a review meeting, a revised programme and a record of why the date moved. Few provide for a refund, and the ones that do usually make it discretionary. Do not enter an agreement expecting money back.
What you can reasonably ask for is that slippage caused by the council is recorded as such, and that the revised timetable does not silently extend the agreed determination period without a fresh written agreement. Extensions of time have to be agreed in writing, and an agreement to extend once is not an agreement to extend indefinitely.
Keep your own log. Date each submission, each consultee response and each meeting. On a scheme running eighteen months, that log is what supports a request for a revised fee or, at the extreme, a decision to withdraw from the agreement and let the statutory clock run.
Deciding whether to enter one
A short test, applied before the quote arrives.
- Count the technical disciplines the application really engages. Below about four, a performance agreement is unlikely to pay.
- Identify whether your programme has a hard financial date. If it does not, speed is worth less than you think.
- Ask the council what its current determination performance is on comparable applications without an agreement.
- Ask what the agreement includes that you would not otherwise get, phrased as a list of deliverables.
- Price the alternative: pre-application advice, a well-scoped submission and the statutory period.
The alternative is often the better buy on a minor scheme. Getting the submission right first time saves more than any agreement does, and the cost of failing validation and resubmitting is the expense that a performance agreement will not prevent.
Remember also that the planning route is only one of the consent streams with its own costs. Highway works under separate agreements run on their own timetable and their own fees, as set out in section 278 and section 38 costs on a small scheme, and a performance agreement with the planning authority does not govern them.
To scope the evidence base before pricing an agreement, the index of report types by category sets out what each document covers, and PlanScope pricing shows what a drafted starting point costs against a consultant quote.
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
Can a council require a planning performance agreement?
No. It is a voluntary arrangement and both sides have to agree to it. A council cannot make one a condition of validating or determining an application, and an applicant cannot insist on one. Where a council suggests an agreement, ask what it delivers beyond the service you are entitled to anyway.
Does a performance agreement remove the right to appeal for non-determination?
In effect, for the agreed period. These agreements normally include an extension of time agreed in writing, which pushes back the date at which non-determination arises. That is the trade for a committed timetable. Any further extension must itself be agreed in writing rather than assumed from the original agreement.
How is the fee calculated?
From estimated officer time by grade and discipline, at the council's published rates, plus specialist input, legal time and a management overhead. Because the charge has to relate to the cost of providing the service, an authority should be able to produce the build-up. Ask for it before agreeing the figure.
Is the statutory application fee included?
No. The performance agreement fee is separate from the statutory application fee, from any pre-application advice charges, from the council's legal costs on a section 106 agreement and from any monitoring sum. A scheme budget needs all five as distinct lines rather than a single planning fees entry.
What happens if the council misses the agreed dates?
Most agreements provide for a review meeting and a revised programme rather than a refund. Ask for slippage caused by the authority to be recorded, and do not let a revised timetable extend the determination period without a fresh written agreement. Keep your own dated log of submissions and responses throughout.
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.