Publicity costs: site notices, press notices and who pays

Planning application publicity cost sits with the local planning authority, not the applicant. Article 15 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 places the duty to publicise an application on the authority, and the application fee is the charge that covers it. Where a council asks a developer to pay for a press notice, that is a negotiated arrangement rather than a statutory charge, and it cannot lawfully be made a condition of validation.

Knowing that changes how you respond when an email arrives asking for £400 before the notice goes in.

What the procedure order requires and when

Article 15 sets different publicity for different categories of application. The pattern is worth learning because it drives the earliest date a decision can be issued.

The notice itself has to follow the form set out in the order, and the 21 day period runs from the date the notice is first displayed. A representation received after the period still has to be taken into account if it arrives before the decision, which is why officers rarely issue on day 22.

For a major application the practical consequence is that the earliest decision date is driven by the later of the site notice expiry, the press notice date and any statutory consultee response period, not by the eight or thirteen week determination clock.

Site notices and whose job it is to put one up

The authority gives the requisite notice by site display. In law the duty is the council's, and the courts have treated it as such.

In practice many councils post the notice out to the agent with a request to display it and return a photograph. That is administratively convenient, and most agents do it. Two points follow. The council cannot refuse to validate because the applicant declines. And if the applicant does display it, keep a dated photograph showing the notice, its position and something identifying the site, because a dispute about display is common and the burden of showing the notice was there falls on the authority.

Notices go missing. Rural sites, sites behind hoardings, and anything on a lamp post next to a school gate lose their notices within days. Where a notice is removed by a third party through no fault of the authority, the order treats the requirement as met if the notice was displayed for the period, though a careful officer will re-display rather than argue about it.

Press notices and the categories that need them

A press notice goes in a newspaper circulating in the locality. The authority chooses the paper and pays the rate card price, and there is no statutory list of approved titles.

Councils normally batch notices into a weekly slot to reduce cost, which means a press notice can add a week to the front of a major application's programme depending on when validation lands. Ask which day the council's weekly slot falls on. It is the single cheapest piece of programme information you will get all month.

For an EIA application the press notice is also the trigger for the environmental statement to be made available, so getting the wording and the inspection address right matters more than usual.

Where an applicant is asked to meet the cost

The fee regulations set what an applicant pays for an application. They do not contain a publicity charge, and statutory publicity is a duty rather than a discretionary service, so the general power to charge for discretionary services under section 93 of the Local Government Act 2003 does not reach it.

Three situations do produce a legitimate bill:

1. A Planning Performance Agreement or pre-application service where the parties agree that the applicant funds additional publicity, a public exhibition or an extra press notice beyond the statutory minimum.
2. Applicant-led consultation, which is a separate exercise from statutory publicity and usually reported through a Statement of Community Involvement.
3. Re-publicity that the applicant requests, for example to head off a challenge after a substantial amendment.

If a request for payment arrives with no agreement behind it, ask which power the charge is made under and where it appears in the council's published fee schedule. The conversation usually ends there. Where an authority is simply short of budget, offering to place and pay for an additional notice voluntarily is often faster than arguing, and it costs less than a month of holding costs. That is a commercial judgement rather than a legal one, and the same logic applies to the trade-offs in the cost of retrospective development.

Re-publicity after amended plans

There is no statutory requirement to re-publicise amended plans. National guidance says authorities should decide whether further publicity is needed, taking into account whether the changes are material and whether anyone who commented would be prejudiced.

The practical test officers apply is whether a reasonable objector, reading the original notice, would have understood the scheme now proposed. Reducing a scheme from 60 to 55 units rarely needs new publicity. Moving a block 12 metres closer to a boundary, adding a storey, or changing the access almost always does.

Where re-publicity is given, it is normally a 14 or 21 day period in a letter to previous commenters rather than a fresh press notice. Keep the correspondence, because at appeal or on a challenge the question is what was advertised and when.

Defective publicity and the risk to the permission

A failure of publicity does not automatically void a permission. On a judicial review the court asks whether the breach caused substantial prejudice to someone who would otherwise have taken part.

That is a real risk rather than a theoretical one, and it lands on the developer who has started work, not on the council. The three failures worth checking for are a press notice that never ran, a site notice photographed on a date inside the consultation period rather than at its start, and a decision issued before the 21 days expired.

Where you find one before the decision, raise it in writing and ask for the period to be re-run. A three week delay is cheaper than an unresolved challenge sitting over a funding drawdown. Where you find one after the decision, take legal advice quickly, because the time limits for challenge are short. Whether a fee is recoverable in that situation is a separate question from the publicity failure, and the rules on refunds are set out in planning fee refunds for non-determination.

Checking publicity before a committee date

Ask the case officer for four things a fortnight before the meeting: the date the site notice was displayed and the photograph, the name of the newspaper and the date the notice ran, the date any re-publicity closed, and the list of statutory consultees with response dates.

If any of the four is missing, the safest outcome is deferral rather than a resolution to grant that has to be revisited. A cost award on an appeal that follows a procedural failure is a separate and avoidable expense, as set out in appeal costs awards.

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.

Budgeting a major application pack rather than the notices themselves? See PlanScope pricing for one free report, £50 per report, or Professional for unlimited reports.