Resubmission fee exemptions and whether one applies to you

Do not budget on the basis of a free second attempt. The planning resubmission fee exemption, the provision practitioners called the free go, sat in regulation 9 of the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, and the amending Regulations that took effect on 6 December 2023 removed it for applications made on or after that date. Other fee exemptions survive, and some of them are more useful than the one that went. Check the current consolidated text of the 2012 Regulations on legislation.gov.uk before you advise a client either way.

That is the short answer. The longer answer matters because the exemption is still described as live in a lot of practice notes, and clients remember it.

What the exemption was designed to do

The free go existed to stop councils being paid twice for the same decision. If an application was refused and the applicant came back with a scheme of the same character on the same site, the authority had already done most of the policy work, so a second fee looked like a penalty on taking officer advice.

In practice it did two useful things. It paid for the risk of submitting a borderline scheme, and it made withdrawal before refusal a sensible tactic rather than an expensive one. Agents used it to test an officer's position on a single issue, usually massing or parking, without the client paying twice.

It also had a cost. Authorities argued that it funded repeat applications that should have been resolved at pre-application stage, and the 2023 fee uplift was presented alongside its removal as a package intended to put more money into planning departments.

The conditions that applied to applicant, site and description

Where you are still dealing with an application made before 6 December 2023, or reading an older decision, the tests were cumulative and strictly applied.

• Same applicant, or an application made on behalf of the same applicant. A different company in the same group was treated as a different applicant.
• The same site, meaning the same application site boundary. Adding or removing land from the red line usually defeated the claim.
• Development of the same character or description as the earlier application. A rear extension replaced by a rear extension of different depth qualified. A rear extension replaced by a loft conversion did not.
• The earlier application must itself have attracted a fee. You could not chain two exempt applications together.
• One exemption only, per earlier application.

The phrase that generated the arguments was "same character or description". Officers read it narrowly, and a change of use application followed by an application for operational development on the same land was almost always treated as a different description.

The twelve-month clock and where it started

The period ran for twelve months from the date of the decision notice on the earlier application, not from the date of submission and not from the expiry of the appeal period. For a withdrawn application it ran from the date the earlier application was made.

That distinction caught people out. Withdraw an application eleven months after submitting it and your free go had already expired, because the clock started at submission. Agents who withdrew at the eleventh hour to avoid a refusal on the record sometimes lost the exemption they were protecting.

Appeals did not stop the clock. If you appealed a refusal and lost, the twelve months still ran from the original decision, which is why a parallel resubmission was often lodged at the same time as the appeal. Our note on resubmitting after a refusal and the cost decision looks at that choice in more detail.

Where the position changed

The indexation point is the one to build into fee letters. Because the Regulations now provide for an annual uplift, a fee quoted in a January appointment letter may be wrong by the time the application is submitted in April. Quote the fee as at the date of the letter, state that it is indexed annually, and point the client at the published schedule rather than carrying the risk yourself.

The exemptions that are still there

Several fee exemptions and reductions in the 2012 Regulations have nothing to do with resubmission, and they are routinely missed.

1. Applications required only because permitted development rights were withdrawn, either by an Article 4 direction or by a condition on an earlier permission, attract no fee.
2. Applications made solely for works to provide access for disabled people to a building to which the public has access, or for the welfare of a disabled person at a dwellinghouse, attract no fee.
3. Applications for listed building consent attract no fee, which is why a combined application for a listed building takes only the planning fee.
4. Consent for works to trees protected by a Tree Preservation Order, and notices of works to trees in a conservation area, attract no fee.
5. Applications under section 73 to vary a condition and under section 96A for a non-material amendment carry flat fees rather than a fee calculated on floorspace or units, which can make a section 73 route cost far less than a fresh application for a large scheme.

The Article 4 exemption is the most valuable of these for anyone working in a conservation area or an HMO direction area, because it applies to the whole application, not to a part of it.

How councils check eligibility

Validation officers check three fields: the applicant name as given on the form, the site address and the red line area, and the description of development. They compare those with the earlier case on the register, and if any of the three has moved they invoice.

Disputes are resolved by the authority in the first instance, and there is no appeal against a fee determination as such. If a council refuses to validate because it says the fee is unpaid, the practical remedies are to pay under protest and seek a refund, or to argue the point in writing and accept that the eight-week clock has not started. Neither is attractive, which is why the covering letter matters.

What to put in the covering letter

Where you claim any fee exemption, say so on the first page rather than burying it. Give the regulation, the earlier application reference, the decision or submission date, and a one-line statement that the applicant, site and description are unchanged. Attach the earlier decision notice.

For an Article 4 claim, state the direction by name and date and confirm that the works would otherwise fall within the relevant class of Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order. Validation officers are not planning officers and will not look the direction up for you.

And price the work on the assumption that there is no free second attempt. The commercial answer to the loss of the free go is to spend more at pre-application stage: a written officer response on the single contentious issue, obtained before submission, now costs less than a refusal. A Planning Statement that engages with the officer's stated concern, rather than restating the scheme, is where that money goes.

Budgeting a pack of supporting documents is a separate exercise, and PlanScope pricing sets out what drafting them costs: one free report, £50 per report, or £150 per month for unlimited reports on the Professional tier.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Fee regulations change and are indexed annually, so check the current schedule and the consolidated Regulations before relying on any figure, and confirm the position with your local planning authority.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.