Councils able to increase planning fees by 20% this month
By:
Mark Smulian
4 Jan 18
A long-awaited 20% increase in local authority planning fees will start on 17 January, a letter from Department for Communities and Local Government’s chief planner Steve Quartermain has said.
The Local Government Association last month complained that councils would miss out on £70m in planning fees if the government persisted in failing to introduce the increase.
Councils had expected the fee increase last July but they were delayed without explanation.
They are still waiting for the results of a government consultation to raise the fees by a further 20%, as opposed in last February’s housing white paper.
Planning fees are intended to cover the cost of a council processing an application but have been subject to constant disputes about whether the nationally set fee scale adequately reflects this cost.
There will also be a new fee of £402 per 0.1 hectare for applications for planning permission in principle and a £96 fee for prior approval applications to permitted development rights, which include rights to install solar PV equipment on non-domestic buildings.
Quartermain’s letter giving full details of the fee changes is here.
Mark Smulian is a freelance journalist
By John Parkinson.
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