HBF estimates £200m in planning performance agreements

Planning performance agreements could have brought councils across England and Wales nearly £200 million in additional income over three years, according to research released by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) and Paragon Development Finance on 8th October 2026. The headline figure is an estimate extrapolated from council responses, not an audited sum collected by every authority.

The 12-page HBF report, now hosted by Planning Geek says 85 councils responded to its Freedom of Information exercise about PPA income between 2022 and 2025. Their reported receipts averaged almost £600,000 per authority, with 12 councils taking more than £1 million each. The City of London recorded the largest total at almost £5 million.

The concern is that extra payments for project management have become increasingly important to overstretched planning departments while applicants continue to wait. For developers, the immediate lesson is to check exactly what an agreement purchases, when decisions are due and how the council will account for the money.

Planning performance agreements: what the £200m means

The HBF’s £200 million figure is a national estimate. It took the average disclosed income from the 85 responding councils and scaled that to authorities across England and Wales for a three-year period. It would be wrong to say that the FOI established £200 million of verified receipts from all councils or that the study independently audited every authority’s accounts.

The confirmed sample findings are themselves significant. Twelve of the 85 respondents received more than £1 million in PPA income, and seven of those were London authorities. The City of London’s almost £5 million was the highest individual total reported. No inference about the income of a council not in the response sample should be presented as a verified amount.

The study’s geographic coverage also matters. Its income analysis concerns England and Wales; it is not a UK-wide calculation including Scottish or Northern Irish planning authorities. The governing planning procedures and charging frameworks differ between the four nations, so English policy guidance should not simply be read across the borders.

The report provides evidence about additional fees rather than proof that paying for an agreement causes delay. Large and complicated applications are more likely to need dedicated coordination in the first place. A fair assessment would compare case complexity, programme changes, resource commitments and elapsed determination times before attributing responsibility.

What a PPA actually buys

In England, the Government’s planning practice guidance on pre-application engagement describes a PPA as a voluntary project-management arrangement between an applicant and the local planning authority. It can set tasks, milestones, responsibilities, specialist inputs and a realistic timetable across the pre-application and determination stages.

A PPA is not a premium route to planning permission. It does not bind the authority to approve the proposal, displace public consultation, override the development plan or permit an officer to promise a particular outcome. Its value should be measurable in agreed handling arrangements, not the council’s willingness to take the applicant’s side.

The same guidance explains that English authorities can recover costs for discretionary activity beyond their statutory responsibilities. Charges should be proportionate and linked to the work supplied. They are distinct from the statutory planning application fee, and applicants should understand whether specialist consultees, design review, meetings and monitoring are included or charged separately.

Planning Geek’s existing pre-application advice guide explains where these agreements sit alongside ordinary advice. For many minor schemes a full PPA would add complexity and cost without a corresponding practical benefit; a narrow scoping discussion can be the more useful purchase.

Why agreed timetables matter to performance statistics

The statutory determination period for a typical major development application in England is normally 13 weeks, increasing to 16 weeks for applications requiring environmental impact assessment. A properly agreed PPA can replace that standard clock with an agreed timetable; a written extension of time can be arranged after the application has been submitted.

That creates an important distinction between two common measures of planning performance. A council might determine an application within its agreed period while the applicant has waited considerably longer than 13 weeks. The former is not necessarily wrong; it simply answers a different question from the time that passes on the calendar.

The HBF argues that routine reliance on PPAs and extensions can obscure the real cost of delay. This is consistent with the distinction already explored in Planning Geek’s report on SME housebuilders and planning delays: statutory timeliness statistics and observed elapsed application times should never be casually substituted for one another.

It would also be inaccurate to suggest that every PPA attracts an additional payment of the same amount, or that an extension of time is necessarily a paid PPA. An extension and a PPA are different tools, although both can change the timetable used to judge whether a decision was made on time.

The difficult position of smaller developers

Large developers can sometimes spread planning overheads and financing costs across multiple active sites. Smaller builders often rely on a narrower pipeline, meaning one prolonged decision can lock up capital, extend professional appointments and delay the start of a construction programme. That uneven exposure is central to the HBF and Paragon’s concern.

A PPA may genuinely help an SME developer where a complex proposal needs rapid input from highways, ecology, drainage, affordable housing and legal teams. Equally, an expensive agreement without identifiable officer time, fixed review points or escalation arrangements is difficult to justify on a small project.

Paragon’s managing director Neal Moy summarised the principle in the report: “PPAs have a useful role in complex schemes, but they should not compensate for underlying capacity constraints.” This is an argument for realistic staffing and management as well as clearer prices, not an argument that every paid agreement is improper.

The report draws on earlier HBF research indicating substantial planning staffing shortages. Such figures describe the federation’s research and should not be confused with a newly measured vacancy rate produced by this specific 85-council income survey. Planning performance also depends on statutory consultees, legal negotiations, applicant information and changes to scheme design.

Five checks before agreeing extra planning fees

An applicant should request a written work schedule showing the services covered, named leads or teams, hours or deliverables, meeting frequency, review milestones and response times. The document should distinguish costs for pre-application advice from resources allocated during determination, and set out any additional consultant or specialist charges.

The agreement should state a realistic target date for the decision, who is responsible for submitting each item, how missing information will be flagged, and what happens if the council changes case officer or misses an agreed milestone. A vague commitment to more meetings is not the same as a credible programme.

For a project with a Section 106 agreement, it is worth agreeing when heads of terms and draft documents will be considered, and how disagreements will be escalated. Local planning authorities cannot promise to control matters entirely in the hands of the applicant, statutory consultees or other bodies.

Applicants should ask how charges are calculated and whether the council will report the use of additional income. They should also preserve the option of ordinary application submission where an agreement is not proportionate. A decision to buy extra project management should have a business case based on anticipated risk reduction, not a fear that permission cannot otherwise be obtained.

Finally, applicants should budget separately for the statutory application fee, the possible costs of technical reports and any PPA or pre-application service. Bundling these different expenses under the heading of ‘planning fee’ makes commercial comparisons between authorities and projects far less useful.

What the HBF wants Government to change

The federation and Paragon call for authorities to publish annual totals for PPA income and explain how it is spent. They also propose a more consistent national approach to charging and service standards, clearer guidance on appropriate use, and sustained investment in planners and specialist expertise.

These are recommendations, not measures already imposed by a new statutory scheme. The report also argues that the effect of any move towards locally set application fees should be monitored so that higher charges can be tested against actual improvements in performance and the speed at which planning conditions are discharged.

There is a defensible case for councils recovering the real cost of additional discretionary work. The public-interest test is whether that income funds more effective processing and fair access, rather than merely sustaining an opaque system where applicants are repeatedly invited to pay extra for uncertain service.

The evidence base is now public: the full HBF and Paragon report (PDF), the HBF announcement dated 8th October, and the Government’s official English PPA guidance. The next useful step is for authorities and ministers to respond with comparable data on income, staff time and elapsed application decisions.