Planning fees 2026: new fees from 8 December

Planning fees 2026 bring the biggest increase in years. The government has confirmed a new national default planning application fee schedule for England, set at around 90 per cent of the estimated cost of processing an application. The changes come into force on 8th December 2026.

The measure appears in a draft statutory instrument, the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026, published on 16th July 2026 alongside the government’s response to its Fees for Planning Applications consultation. The draft amends the 2012 Fees Regulations (SI 2012/2920).

One point to be clear on: this is still a draft. It has been laid before Parliament under the affirmative procedure, which means both Houses must approve it before it can be made. Until that happens the current fees continue to apply, and the figures below could in theory still change.

What the planning fees 2026 increase means in practice

The government has not applied a flat percentage increase across the board. Instead each category of application has been re-priced to reach roughly 90 per cent of what it actually costs a council to process that particular type of application. Because some fees were further below cost than others, the increases vary considerably: a householder application rises by about 8 per cent, while a section 73 application on major development rises by just over 50 per cent.

The government has stopped short of full cost recovery, arguing that a single national fee set at 100 per cent would over-recover for the more efficient authorities and would remove any incentive to improve.

A new fee for prior approval applications

The one genuinely new charge is a flat £310 fee for prior approval applications that are currently free. Regulation 4 inserts a catch-all into regulation 14(1) of the 2012 Regulations covering “any other application” under Schedule 2 to the GPDO. If you currently submit a prior approval notification at no cost, expect to pay from December

Permission in principle moves to a flat fee

Permission in principle currently costs a sum per 0.1 hectare of site area, which produces some very large figures on bigger sites. A new paragraph 4A in Schedule 1 replaces that with a single flat fee of £825 whatever the site size. For most applicants this is a straightforward saving

The bigger rises

• Discharge of conditions goes to £125 for householder cases and £435 for everything else, close to a 50 per cent rise on both
• Section 73 applications on major development go to £3,150, up by just over half
• Certificates of appropriate alternative development go to £964, more than treble the current fee and by far the steepest proportionate increase in the package
• The maximum fee payable goes to £513,512, up by around a quarter
• Non-material amendments go to £53 for householder cases and £360 for everything else

A word of caution on comparisons. The regulations work by substituting the underlying figures in the 2012 Regulations, and those underlying figures are then uprated for inflation every April. What you actually pay today is the uprated amount, not the figure printed in the 2012 Regulations, so the real increase is usually a little smaller than a straight reading of the two instruments suggests. Our planning fees page sets out both sets of figures in full.

Notably, the fee for a non-major section 73 application barely moves. The draft sets it at £608, which is roughly what is already payable once this April’s inflation uprating is taken into account, so in real terms it is close to standing still. The government consulted on taking it to £825 but decided against it, because at that level it would sometimes have exceeded the fee for the equivalent full application

What is not changing

The exemptions and concessions survive intact. There is no change to the exemption for works to adapt a dwelling for a disabled person, the 50 per cent parish and community council concession, or the “same day, same site” rule that avoids paying twice where a prior approval and a planning application are submitted together. Listed building consent remains free of charge. Conservation area consent does not appear in the fee schedule at all, because it was abolished in England on 1 October 2013 and demolition in a conservation area is dealt with as planning permission instead.

The government was asked to reinstate the “free go” for repeat applications, abolished in December 2023, or to introduce a reduced resubmission fee. It has declined to do either. There is also no new fee for approving a biodiversity gain plan, which stays within the ordinary discharge of conditions fee, and no fee is being introduced for planning appeals in England.

Which fee applies to your application

Regulation 12 makes this refreshingly simple. The new fees apply only to applications made on or after 8th December 2026. If you submit before that date you pay the current fee, even if the council does not determine the application until well into 2027. The trigger is the date of submission, not validation and not determination.

The new amounts will then be subject to the usual annual inflation uprating, but not until 1st April 2027, so there is no double increase within the first few months.

What comes next

This is only the first step. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 contains powers for councils to set their own fees locally, and these regulations do not implement them. The government intends to bring forward separate regulations, which it expects to do by the end of 2026, allowing authorities to charge up to 30 per cent above the national default where they can evidence higher costs, together with a surcharge to fund statutory consultees.

The national schedule set out here is therefore genuinely a default: the figure that applies unless and until your local planning authority sets something different. Anyone budgeting for a 2027 application should treat these numbers as a floor rather than a fixed price.

The perennial criticism remains unanswered. Fee income is still not ring-fenced for planning, so there is no guarantee the extra money reaches the planning department that earned it. The government’s position is that councils are best placed to decide their own spending priorities, and that it will monitor performance and intervene where decision-making falls short.

You can read the draft regulations and the consultation response in full on the links below. Our planning fees page sets out both the current fees and the new figures side by side.

• Draft Town and Country Planning (Fees) (England) (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026
• Town and Country Planning (Fees) (England) Regulations 2012
• Fees for planning applications: government response

Planning fees 2026 Page Updated: 13th August 2026