The government is currently running a consultation on proposals to increase planning fees for all planning applications in England, which closes to comments on the 25 April.
This sets out a fee increase, of 35% for major applications and 25% for all other applications, while retrospective applications will have their fees doubled.
The last time the fees were increased was January 2018, and the consultation reflects the ambition for planning to be “principally funded by the beneficiaries of planning gain – landowners and developers – rather than the taxpayer”, as the document states.
In 2022, RTPI research found that local authority net expenditure on planning fell by 43% from £844 million in 2009/10 to £480 million in 2020/21. This translated to LPAs struggling to recruit and retain skilled staff, with just 8% of town planner jobs being posted in the public sector between 2016 and 2021.
Of note, the consultation asks for opinions on whether this additional income from should be ring-fenced for use by the local authority planning department.
The paper does acknowledge that fees must be just one route to the funding of the planning service, stating: “As noted by many bodies representing the planning profession such as the RTPI, increasing fees by the proposed amount or in isolation is not enough to address the capacity and capability challenges faced by local planning authorities.”
Victoria Hills, chief executive at the RTPI, said: “The RTPI has been calling for increased resourcing to planning services consistently because planners cannot do more for less in perpetuity. We believe it is necessary to raise fees in line with inflation and ring fence their use.
“We’ve heard time and again that developers see the lack of planning resources as the biggest barrier to building new homes, and are willing to pay more for the services they receive.
“However, while increased fees are an important first step, we do not see them as a silver bullet to meeting the capacity requirements.”
