When no planning fee is payable

A planning application with no fee payable is not a favour from the council. It is a category set out in the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, and if your application falls inside one of those categories the authority cannot require a fee to validate it. The categories that matter most to landlords and conversion investors are applications needed only because permitted development rights were withdrawn, alterations for a disabled occupant, listed building consent, tree works, and the one revised application that follows a refusal.

Get the category wrong and the application sits unvalidated while you argue. Get it right and you state the exemption on the form, cite the regulation, and move on.

Applications needed only because permitted development rights were taken away

This is the exemption that bites hardest in HMO territory. A change of use from a C3 dwellinghouse to a small house in multiple occupation in class C4 is permitted development under the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, so in most of England it needs no application at all. In a borough or district that has made an article 4 direction removing that right, it does.

Where planning permission is required solely because an article 4 direction, or a condition on an earlier permission, has withdrawn a permitted development right, the fee regulations exempt the application. The word doing the work is solely. If the proposal also involves an extension that would have needed permission anyway, or a further change beyond what the withdrawn right covered, the exemption falls away and the normal fee applies.

So the first question on any article 4 application is a narrow one. Strip out the article 4 direction: would this proposal have been permitted development? If the answer is a clean yes, you have an exemption. If the answer needs a paragraph of explanation, expect the validation team to charge.

Check the direction itself rather than a summary of it. Directions vary in what they remove, which parts of the order they touch and the area they cover, and a direction that covers one ward of a town may not cover the street you have bought in.

Alterations for a disabled occupant

The regulations exempt applications relating to works for the alteration of a dwellinghouse to provide access for a disabled person, or to provide facilities intended for the greater health, safety or comfort of a disabled person. A parallel exemption covers works to provide access for disabled people to a building or land open to the public.

Ramps, level thresholds, a widened opening, a ground-floor wet room in an extension built for that purpose, a lift in a converted house. Where the application relates to those works, no fee is payable.

Mixed schemes are the difficulty. An extension that provides a ground-floor bedroom and bathroom for a disabled occupant and also adds a kitchen extension the household simply wanted is not obviously within the exemption. Describe the works honestly, explain the purpose, and let the authority decide rather than assuming.

Listed building consent and tree works

Listed building consent applications carry no fee. That has been the position for a long time and it surprises owners who assume that the more regulated consent must be the more expensive one. The cost of a listed building application sits in the evidence, not the fee, which is why a budget for a listed building application should be built around the heritage work rather than the submission.

Where the same works need both planning permission and listed building consent, the planning application attracts its normal fee and the consent application does not. Two forms, one fee.

Applications for consent to carry out work to a tree protected by a Tree Preservation Order are also free, as are the six-week notices for work to trees in a conservation area. The reason is policy rather than accounting: charging for permission to prune a protected tree would discourage people from asking.

The free go on a revised application

After a refusal or a withdrawal, the regulations allow one further application for development of the same character or description, on the same site, by or on behalf of the same applicant, without a further fee. The revised application has to be submitted within twelve months of the relevant decision or withdrawal, and the original application must not itself have been a free go.

Three conditions do the work: same site, same applicant, same character or description. Redesign the scheme to answer the reason for refusal and you stay inside the exemption. Change the red line, add a plot, or switch the applicant to a different company in the group and you are outside it.

One free go per permission, not one per year. Use it on the application most likely to succeed rather than on a quick resubmission that repeats the refused design. The cost of failing validation and resubmitting is a separate and avoidable expense, and a resubmission that never gets validated does not consume the free go but does consume weeks.

Concessions that reduce a fee rather than remove it

Some cases cut the fee instead of removing it. The regulations carry concessions for certain applicants and certain kinds of works, including applications made by or on behalf of parish and community councils and works by non-profit-making sports clubs for playing fields. Whether a particular case is nil or simply reduced depends on the current text of the regulations, so read the schedule rather than a summary.

The same caution applies to alternative proposals. Where several applications for different schemes on the same site go in together, the regulations set out how the fee is calculated across them, and the outcome is not always one fee per form.

Planning fees in England are indexed annually, so any figure you find in an older article or a printed guide will be out of date. Check the current schedule before you budget.

Claiming the exemption when you submit

The mechanics are simple and people still get them wrong.

1. Identify the exemption by name and by regulation before you start the form.
2. Select the matching option in the fee section of the application service rather than entering zero and hoping.
3. Attach a short covering note that states the exemption, the regulation, and the one fact that brings you inside it: the date and reference of the article 4 direction, the condition number that removed the right, or the date of the earlier refusal for a free go.
4. Keep the direction, the decision notice or the condition with the submission pack so the validation officer does not have to look for it.
5. If the authority disputes the exemption, ask which limb of the regulation it says you fall outside, in writing.

A covering note of four sentences is usually the difference between validation in two days and a fortnight of email.

What still costs money

Plenty. Prior approval applications under the permitted development order carry their own fees. Discharge of conditions carries a fee per request. Non-material amendments under section 96A carry a fee. Lawful development certificates carry fees, generally at a proportion of the equivalent planning application fee for a proposed use, and a certificate is the only formal way to confirm that works are lawful.

And the fee is rarely the largest number on the page. A change of use in an article 4 area may cost nothing to submit and still need a parking survey, a noise assessment and a set of drawings. If you are working out which supporting documents an authority will expect, the full index of report types sets out what each one covers, and PlanScope pricing shows what drafting them 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.