Withdrawing and resubmitting: the free resubmission rule

A free resubmission planning application is possible because the England fee regulations exempt one repeat application from the fee, so long as the second application covers development of the same character or description, on the same site, by the same applicant, and arrives within twelve months. The trade calls it the one free go. What catches people out is the start date for those twelve months, which is not the same for a refused application as for a withdrawn one.

Get it wrong and the council returns the application as invalid for non-payment, and the revised scheme loses another month.

Where the exemption comes from

The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012, as amended, set every planning application fee in England, and they also set the exemptions. The repeat-application exemption is one of them. It is not a discretion your case officer exercises. The validation team applies the test to the facts on the form, and where the test is met the fee is nil.

Government guidance sits in the Planning Practice Guidance chapter on fees. Fees were uplifted in December 2023 and are indexed annually from April 2025, so check the current schedule before you quote a client a figure.

The exemption covers the planning application fee and nothing else. Pre-application advice charges, applications to discharge conditions, section 73 applications and section 96A non-material amendment requests all carry their own fees, and none of them is caught by it. The wider set of fee exemptions and reductions sits elsewhere in the same regulations and is worth checking separately.

The conditions that have to be met

Five things have to line up.

1. The earlier application was made by the same applicant. A change of applicant name between the two submissions, including a move from a personal name to a limited company, breaks the chain.
2. The site is the same. A red line redrawn to add a strip of garden is a different site in the council's eyes, and boundary changes are the most common reason a free go is refused at validation.
3. The development is of the same character or description as the earlier proposal.
4. The earlier application was granted, refused, or withdrawn before it was determined.
5. The new application arrives within twelve months of the relevant date, and the earlier application was not itself a fee-exempt repeat.

That last limb quietly removes the second bite. You cannot resubmit free, get refused again, and resubmit free a second time against the same original application.

What the same character or description means in practice

The regulations do not define the phrase, and councils do not publish a checklist for it. A validation officer is asking whether this is recognisably the same project, revised in response to the reasons for refusal, rather than a new proposal that happens to sit on the same land.

A rear extension refused on depth and resubmitted 1.5 m shorter is the same description. The same extension resubmitted with a loft conversion and two dormers added usually is not, because the scheme now contains work the council never assessed. Moving the proposal into a different use class almost always ends the claim, as does a shift from a householder application to a full application for two dwellings.

Where you are close to the line, say so in the covering material. A short paragraph in the Planning Statement that gives the earlier reference number, the reasons for refusal and the specific change made against each reason gives the validation officer something to point at. It also saves the case officer a week working out what moved.

How the twelve months is counted

For a refused application the twelve months runs from the date on the decision notice, not from the committee resolution and not from the day the notice reached your inbox. For a granted application it runs from the date of that grant. Where the earlier application went to appeal, the clock runs from the date the appeal was decided or withdrawn, which can push the window well past a year from the original refusal.

The last row is the one to commit to memory.

Withdrawn applications and the trap in the dates

When an application is withdrawn, the twelve months does not restart from the withdrawal. It runs from the date the earlier application was made. A scheme submitted on 3 March, nursed through consultation, amended twice and finally withdrawn on 12 November has already spent more than eight of its twelve months. Resubmit the following April and the free go has gone.

That changes how you advise a client heading for a refusal. Withdrawing keeps a refusal off the planning record, which matters because a refusal is a material consideration a future officer will read and a question on most conveyancing enquiries. But a withdrawal burns the fee exemption window faster than a refusal does, and the later in the determination period you withdraw, the less of the window survives.

One honest uncertainty. Councils are not consistent about which date they take for a withdrawn application, and a few will accept the withdrawal date. Do not plan around that. Work from the submission date and leave yourself a margin.

One exemption, and how to time a withdrawal

The exemption attaches to the earlier application, and it can be used once. Sequence the revisions accordingly. If you expect to need two goes, spend the exemption on the attempt most likely to succeed and budget the fee for the other. On a householder scheme the fee is small against the drawing time. On a major application it is not, and the arithmetic changes.

Where a refusal is coming and the reasons look fixable, there is a real case for letting it be refused. You get reasons in writing, which beats an officer's verbal summary, and the consultee replies sit on file, so reading the officer's case file tells you what actually drove the decision. The same timing calculation applies where an authority has simply not decided, which is the live question in appealing non-determination or waiting.

An illustrative example. A two-storey side extension on a 1930s semi is submitted on 10 January and refused on 7 March for an overbearing effect on the neighbour's rear window. A resubmission on 2 June, with the first floor set back 1.2 m and the flank window obscure-glazed, is the same character and description, on the same site, by the same applicant, within twelve months of 7 March. No fee. Had the scheme instead been withdrawn on 1 March, the window would have closed on 10 January the following year.

Keep the paperwork. A dated copy of the earlier decision notice or withdrawal confirmation, the earlier reference number on the new form, and one line claiming the exemption in the covering letter will usually clear validation without a phone call. Councils do check, and a missing reference number is enough to stall the application for a fortnight.

Before you resubmit, re-read the reasons for refusal against the documents you are about to send again. Several of the 66 report types on PlanScope exist because a council asked for evidence the first submission did not contain. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site is likely to need.

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.