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COUNCIL PLANNING FEES AND CHARGES GOING THROUGH THE ROOF

Planning Prices are going up and up, and it is the Client that gets affected

 We put this small article together to explain the increasing fees the council and governments have adopted on all application fees set out in England, Scotland and Wales

Planning fees within 12 months have gone up tenfold, and the quality in services has gone down

It’s been now one year since the government’s decision to scrap the second free go on all planning applications submitted either online via the planning portal or postal schemes, and homeowners are now feeling the pinch of paying higher fees.

Not only by paying the additional costs for new applications being submitted but the increased timeframe to get the permissions in place would be added in the event a refusal were to happen. This is now more likely to happen if the design needs to be altered for reasons we will explore.

Each second application submitted still takes around the same time to be decided from the first one. You would have thought that because the same case officer appointed on your case is familiar with the design being repeated only to review the new changes implemented would be a quicker examination process, but no, that’s not the case; the reason is more likely to be due to the fact that your case officer has an overstretched workload with backlogs to go through because in general the planning departments are most often understaffed so each application is dragged out to the full length of the eight-week process making final application decision feel like a never-ending process.

Image by Benjamin Elliott

Waiting for 8 weeks to get an approved decision to just get planning...

Can you imagine? Well, most people are paying a mortgage, so having a refusal on the first application and then waiting

for a second to pass will take a total of four months; that’s four months of mortgage payments, then there’s the wait of Building Control stuff to sort out which then can lead to five months starting your project. Many mortgage payments, indeed.

TIGHTENING THE MONEY CATCH 

On the 6th of December 2023, the government decided to enforce full payments on all second planning applications via the electronic automated system or by postal services, where all applicants need to pay the full amount again.

This was always a free-go offer, leading to case officers being more helpful and engaging in communicating with agents to aim for a positive outcome on submitted applications the first time around. It’s in the interest of all parties working together to provide such an environment to achieve a positive result for all. Happy client at the end of the day, that’s what needs to happen in an ideal world…..

Now, as there is additional revenue involved by the council making money by paying for additional planning fees, other service providers that we occasionally consult with have expressed concerns that more and more applicants are being dealt with differently, less efficiently and productively, with more applications being refused.

We can’t comment on if this is done on purpose, but summarising less feedback from case officers leading to refusals to gain more money on second submissions seems to much of a coincidence with raised eyebrows.

For example, case officers can choose which application may be subject to a refusal without consulting with the agent or applicant, as they are in full control of their actions and may be following orders from above. Refusing 100 more applications than usual alone can generate the borough £32,800, where the portal has a cut of the revenue based on service charges.

This has tightened up our design methods on each project we carry out and how we deal with each particular application. There are no more pushing the boundaries on designs we submit to the council as now charges are enforced; it’s in our interest to achieve results the first time around to save unfortunate expenses and costly timeframes to you and our design / administrative team.

The current fees charged by the council today are as follows:
 

  • Certificate of Lawfulness - proposed use class - £120 +£70 portal service charge.

  • Householder Applications £258 + £70 portal service charge. 


That’s correct. The portal has slapped a service charge on all applications submitted on their online system. This has been in force for the past year now, with 350,800 applications being submitted within the year period ending March 2024, generating a whopping £24,556,000 in extra revenue. From thin air….

Are you thinking of going the postal paper route to save this expense? Well, then, you are mistaken as the boroughs have caught on to this additional revenue maker, so you will now pay the council directly for their implemented service charge of approximately £53.33+vat.

IT GETS BETTER................

Service charges are never refundable, so if, in the event you decide to cancel a submitted application.

Only the council's fee will be refunded to the payee, which takes two weeks if caught early, leaving you out of pocket by £70.

 

You may get feedback from a particular borough that it’s too late to claim any refund at all as your application has been processed, and your money will be lost. It’s like the luck of the draw, and it’s pretty bad in some cases. As we’ve seen this happen, it’s like the council is making up the rules as they go along. Contradicting the portal’s statement of early withdrawals of applications are subject to refunds, contact your local council's department for a refund request.

 

Furthermore, in addition to all these added fees, other charges are slapped

on agents. The name of this charge is called the “in-house council service

charge” (if it wasn’t enough being charged by the portals charge). The in-house

service charge is subject to incomplete submitted applications; this has only

been enforced, luckily, by TWO boroughs. REDBRIDGE and SUTTON so far. 

 

What happens with REDBRIDGE and SUTTON’S system? If, at the vetting stage, any documents that are outstanding will be requested in the normal procedure by a cover letter being sent to the agent, but a subjective admission charge of £60 will need to be paid alongside the supplied material initially requested, SUTTON council charge a smaller fee of £30.

 

Is it all to do with money, or are we mistaken? 

These fees roll on to the applicant, not at all fair we agree. 

 

Flipping the way we usually did things in the past. For instance, additional documents such as FIRE SAFETY STRATEGY STATEMENTS, FLOOD RISK ASSESSMENTS, SuDS Pro-forma and ACCESS & DESIGN STATEMENTS all cost money and are usually held back until asked for at the vetting stage by the staff within the council. 

 

Each Report or Statement mentioned above is charged at approx. £300 for in-depth detailed material to be published, so for the interests of our clients, why prepare these documents if they may not need to be requested by a case officer, even though they are mandatory as stated on the council planning guidelines? This is evident in 50% of the submitted householder applications we carry out on behalf of our clients.

 

Now, in that case, when registering with either one of the above-mentioned councils, we cannot take that risk, so if you’re property is located within any of these two boroughs, you will be paying for these additional documents regardless prior to submission to save being fined and delays occurring. 

 

Our motto at Discount Plans when dealing with the majority of other borough planning departments when registering householder applications is not to spend money on getting these documents in place and to wait for the direct request by your appointed case officer, then prepare only what is needed to get your application through to vetting stage. This method will 100% save you £100's in unnecessary further expenses if not required.

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PLANNING PORTAL SUBMISSION.....

FIRE SAFETY STRATEGY STATEMENTS, FLOOD RISK ASSESSMENTS, SuDS Pro-forma’s and ACCESS & DESIGN STATEMENTS documents are never requested via the initial planning portal submission stage when uploading the required mandatory documentation. The portal have their own specific requirements on what information, drawings and maps are required for a successful submission to take place, this is carried out by our admin team successfully on all applications we undertake for our clients. Once the application is transferred over to the council a vetting officer will review what additional information is needed to validate the application.

THE USUAL VALIDATION PROCESS

Typically other councils give 21 days notice to provide any outstanding additional information without the hefty expenses associated to non valid applications, but this could change without notice as they (councils) all eventually cotton on over time on how to generate more money.

Contact our team today to understand the additional documents needed to fly through the vetting stage on your proposed application submission. Permitted Development Applications do not apply.

We hope you found this helpful article for your proposed loft conversion proposal, join1000s of other satisfied customers whom we have helped design to their tailored layout. Regards John. Domenech 

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07838135957

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