Pre-application fee bands and what each band buys

Pre application fee bands are set by each local planning authority under its own published charging schedule, and the bands almost always track development scale rather than complexity. A single dwelling sits in one band, ten units in another, a major scheme in a third. What the fee buys varies far more than the fee itself, so the question to ask before paying is not how much but what service level the schedule attaches to your band, and whether the written response is included or charged separately.

Where the power to charge comes from

Pre-application advice is a discretionary service. Authorities charge for it under section 93 of the Local Government Act 2003, which allows a local authority to charge for a discretionary service up to the cost of providing it.

Two things follow from that. Charges are supposed to be cost-recovery rather than profit, which is why schedules are built around officer hours. And because the service is discretionary, an authority can decline to provide it, withdraw it, or run it only for certain categories of development.

There is no statutory right to pre-application advice and no statutory time limit for a response. The schedule may promise one, and that promise is contractual in character rather than a planning deadline.

How authorities band their charges

The structures you will meet fall into a small number of shapes.

VAT treatment differs between authorities, so take the quoted figure as net or gross depending on what the schedule says rather than assuming.

Always read the schedule rather than a summary page. The useful detail, how many meetings, whether a site visit is included, how long the written response takes, whether a second round is chargeable, lives in the schedule or in the service standard document attached to it.

What a basic service includes, and what an enhanced one adds

A basic service is usually a desk-based written response from a planning officer, confirming the policy framework, the constraints affecting the site, the likely documents the validation list will require, and an initial view on the principle of development.

That is worth having, and it is often all a straightforward single-dwelling scheme needs. It will not include specialist consultee input, and it rarely includes a site visit.

An enhanced service adds the things that change a scheme. A meeting, so the officer's concerns can be tested against your drawings in real time. A site visit, which matters disproportionately where levels, trees or neighbouring windows are the issue. Input from the conservation officer, the highway authority or environmental health, each of whom holds the objection that will otherwise appear at week six of the application. And on larger schemes, agreement on the scope of the evidence base, including whether a Viability Assessment will be needed and what inputs the authority expects in it.

The access question is where enhanced services earn their fee most often, because highway authority positions on visibility, geometry and the cost of works under section 278 are hard to anticipate from outside, as our note on highway works costs in a development appraisal shows.

The weight written advice carries later

Pre-application advice is officer advice. It does not bind the authority, it is not a decision, and it cannot be appealed.

What it does do is create a record. Where an application follows the advice and is then refused on a ground the advice said was acceptable, the inconsistency is a point you can put to an inspector, and it can support an argument about unreasonable behaviour on costs. That is not a strong hand on its own. It is better than nothing, and it costs you nothing extra to have the advice in writing.

Advice also goes stale. A new local plan, a change to the NPPF, a fresh constraint on the mapping, any of these can overtake it. Treat anything older than about a year as needing a check rather than as a position you can rely on.

One honest caveat. Officers are careful about how they write these responses precisely because of the use described above, so the language is often more guarded than the conversation in the meeting. Expect the letter to say less than the officer said.

Preparing so the fee buys something

The commonest waste is paying for a service level that cannot answer the question you have, or arriving with drawings too vague to react to.

1. Write down the three questions you need answered, in order, and send them with the submission. Officers answer what they are asked.
2. Provide a scaled site plan, existing and proposed elevations and a floor plan, even in sketch form, with dimensions marked. A description without drawings produces a response about policy rather than about your scheme.
3. State your constraints research up front: flood zone, conservation area, listed buildings nearby, Tree Preservation Orders, Article 4 directions. Getting these wrong in the submission wastes the officer's time on correcting you.
4. Identify the specialist input you think is needed and pay for it at the outset, rather than discovering at the meeting that highways was never consulted.
5. Ask explicitly which documents the authority's local validation list will require, and get the answer in writing.
6. Agree who attends. An architect who can redraw in the room is more useful than three people who cannot.

When to skip pre-application entirely

Not every scheme benefits. Skip it where the proposal is plainly within permitted development limits, because the right answer there is a lawful development certificate rather than advice. Skip it where an authority's published service standard shows a response time longer than the statutory determination period for the application itself, which happens in some stretched planning departments.

Also think twice where the scheme is a resubmission after a refusal, since the refusal reasons are already the authority's written position and a second opinion from the same team is unlikely to differ.

The strongest case for paying is the opposite situation: a site with a constraint you cannot resolve yourself, a use that may or may not need permission, or a scheme whose principle is finely balanced against the development plan. On a major scheme the choice is rarely whether to engage but whether to do it through a Planning Performance Agreement, which may also cover the scope of a viability appraisal submission.

Recording what was agreed

Send your own note of the meeting to the officer within a few days, setting out what you understood was agreed and what remains open. Ask for correction rather than confirmation, which officers find easier to respond to.

Keep the schedule page you paid against, the receipt, the submission pack, the officer's written response and your note. When the application goes in, reference the pre-application number in the covering material and explain how the scheme responds to each point raised, including the points you decided not to follow and why.

That last part is the one people skip, and it is the one that stops an officer reopening a settled issue.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site is likely to need before you book pre-application advice, so the enquiry asks the right questions.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Charging schedules and service standards differ by authority, so check the current published schedule for your council before relying on anything here. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.