What the national planning application fee bands cover

Planning application fee bands in England are set nationally, which means your council has no discretion over them and no interest in arguing about them. The figures sit in the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications) Regulations 2012 as amended, and since April 2025 they are indexed annually, so any figure you read in an older article is wrong. Check the current schedule before you budget.

What the bands do not do is scale with the work involved. A fee is attached to a category of application, and the category is defined by the type of development, the number of dwellings, the floorspace created or the site area, depending on which applies.

Where the fee schedule comes from

Fees are prescribed by regulations made by central government and apply to every local planning authority in England. The authority collects the fee, keeps it, and cannot waive, discount or increase it.

Two consequences follow. There is no negotiation, and a council that asks for more than the prescribed fee has made a mistake, which is worth checking on an unusual application. The authority cannot validate an application until the correct fee has been paid, so a fee calculated wrongly delays the start of the determination period rather than being sorted out later.

Fees were increased substantially in December 2023 and have been subject to annual indexation since April 2025. The practical effect is that the schedule changes on 1 April each year, so a budget set in February for a submission in May needs the new figures.

The householder and minor bands

Householder development, meaning an alteration or extension to a single dwelling within its curtilage, attracts a single flat fee regardless of the size of the extension. A modest porch and a large two storey rear and side extension cost the same to apply for.

Where the application covers alterations or extensions to two or more dwellinghouses, a higher flat fee applies. That catches a terrace of flats being altered together, and it is the band people most often get wrong because they assume the householder rate applies per property.

New dwellings are charged per dwelling up to a threshold, above which a base figure plus a reduced rate per additional dwelling applies, subject to an overall cap. The cap matters only on very large schemes.

Other fixed-fee categories that come up on small projects include prior approval applications under the permitted development order, applications to vary or remove a condition under section 73, non-material amendments under section 96A, and applications to discharge conditions, which are charged per request rather than per condition. Submitting three conditions for discharge in one request costs one fee. Submitting them separately costs three, which is a straightforward saving available to anyone who plans ahead.

Floorspace and site area calculations

For non-residential development the fee is calculated on the gross floorspace created, in bands, with an incremental rate per unit of floorspace above a threshold and an overall cap.

Two definitions do the work. Gross floorspace means the floorspace created by the development, measured externally, and it excludes areas that are not created, such as a change of use within an existing building with no new floorspace. Where no floorspace is created, the fee usually falls into a flat-rate category instead.

Site area based charging applies to categories such as the erection of buildings not covered by other bands, operations like mineral working, and outline applications. The area used is the site area of the application, so drawing a red line generously around a small proposal costs money. Draw the application boundary to what you actually need.

Outline applications and the hectare rate

Outline applications are charged on site area, per fraction of a hectare, up to a threshold area, with a base figure plus a reduced rate for area above it and a cap.

The effect is that an outline application on a large site is expensive, and on a small site it costs little more than a full application. So the choice between outline and full is rarely driven by the fee. It is driven by whether you want the principle established before investing in detailed design, and by what the authority will require as reserved matters.

One practical warning. Where an outline permission exists, the reserved matters application attracts its own fee, and that fee is calculated as though the application were a fresh one for the development in question unless the regulations provide otherwise. Budget for both, not one.

Concessions, exemptions and the free resubmission

Several concessions exist and are routinely missed.

• Works solely for the purpose of providing access or facilities for a disabled person at a dwelling, or at a building to which the public has access, attract no fee.
• Listed building consent applications attract no fee, as do applications for consent to carry out works to a tree protected by an Order.
• A second application for the same development on the same site by the same applicant, submitted within twelve months of the decision on or withdrawal of the first, is normally free. Only one such free application is available, and the development has to be substantially the same.
• Where two applications for alternative schemes on the same site are submitted on the same day by the same applicant, the fee for the second is reduced.

The free resubmission is the one worth planning around. If a refusal can be answered by a design change rather than by an appeal, the resubmission costs nothing in fee terms within that twelve month window, which changes the arithmetic of whether to appeal. Our note on what a planning agent's fixed fee includes sets out the other side of that comparison, since the professional cost of a resubmission is not nil even where the fee is.

Lawful development certificates are charged differently, and the fee depends on whether the certificate concerns an existing or a proposed use. Our guide to budgeting a lawful development certificate application covers the detail.

Paying through the portal or the council

Most applications are submitted through the national planning portal, which forwards the application and the fee to the authority. Some authorities also accept submissions through their own systems or on paper.

The portal may apply its own service charge in addition to the authority's fee on certain application types. Check the total at the point of submission, and check whether your council offers a direct route, because on a small householder application a service charge is a noticeable proportion of the cost.

Keep the payment receipt and the application reference together. Fee queries at validation stage are common, usually because the authority has placed the application in a different category, and the fastest way to resolve one is to cite the regulation and the category you relied on.

What the fee does not buy

The fee buys the determination of the application. It does not buy any of the following, and each is a separate cost.

Pre-application advice is charged separately under the authority's own published scale, and those charges are set locally rather than nationally. Validation is not guaranteed by payment, since an application missing documents on the local list will be returned with the fee refunded or held. The discharge of conditions after approval carries its own fee for each request. The community infrastructure levy, where it applies, is a separate liability entirely, as are section 106 contributions and the authority's monitoring fees.

The fee also buys no particular level of service, no site visit as of right and no guaranteed decision date. It buys a decision, eventually.

The refund nobody claims

There is one provision worth knowing. Where the authority fails to determine an application within twenty six weeks of validation, and no extension of time has been agreed, the regulations provide for the fee to be refunded.

In practice this applies to applications that have drifted, which is more common than it should be on minor applications where the applicant has stopped chasing. Agreeing an extension of time with the case officer removes the entitlement, so think before signing one, particularly late in the process where the extension buys the authority time rather than buying you anything.

Before you submit, do two things: confirm the current figure for your category from the published schedule, and check whether the free resubmission concession applies to you. Those two checks are worth more than any amount of fee comparison. If you also need the supporting documents, the pricing page sets out what a draft report costs alongside the application fee.

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.