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Planning fees rise on 8 December 2026, and unlike the April increase this one is not a CPI adjustment. Fees are being re-priced to roughly 90% of actual cost recovery for each application type, which means the increases vary enormously by category — and the sharpest ones land on exactly the things small developers do most often.
The government response to the fees consultation was published on 16 July 2026. Here is what it does and what to do about it in the next five weeks.
The trigger is the date of submission
Not validation. Not determination. The date the application is submitted.
Which makes this a straightforward arbitrage: anything you can validly submit before 8 December is charged at the current rate. Anything that slips is charged at the new one.
The word “validly” is carrying weight there. A rushed application that gets rejected and resubmitted in January is charged at the new rate and has cost you a month.
The new fees
| Application type | From 8 December 2026 |
|---|---|
| Householder | £195 |
| Minor dwellings (up to 49) | roughly £385–£825 by scale |
| Major dwellings (50+) | roughly £1,155–£2,585 |
| Prior approval | new flat £310 — many were previously free |
| Discharge of conditions | £125 householder / £435 other — up around 50% |
| Section 73, major development | £3,150 — up just over 50% |
| Permission in principle | flat £825 regardless of site size |
| Non-material amendments (s96A) | £53 householder / £360 other |
| Maximum fee | £513,512 — up around 25% |
Note that permission in principle becoming a flat £825 is a saving for larger sites previously charged per 0.1 hectare. It is one of the few categories moving in your favour, and it sits alongside the NPPF’s confirmation that medium sites can access permission in principle.
Two increases had already happened this year: national fees rose 3.8% on 1 April 2026, CPI-linked to September 2025.
The three that actually hurt an SME
Look past the headline application fees. The categories with the steepest proportional rises are the administrative ones you cannot avoid.
Discharge of conditions, up about 50%. On a typical medium scheme you are discharging conditions in tranches — pre-commencement, pre-superstructure, pre-occupation — and each tranche is a fee. A scheme with three discharge applications is now paying meaningfully more for the privilege of complying with its own permission.
Section 73, up just over 50% on major development to £3,150. Every scheme that changes after consent — which is most of them — goes through section 73. This is a tax on iteration.
Prior approval, from free to £310 flat. If prior approval is part of how you deliver, this is a new line item that did not exist.
None of these are large numbers in isolation. Across a pipeline of six or eight live schemes, each with multiple discharges and at least one variation, they add up to a four-figure annual increase in pure administrative cost.
What to submit before the date
Work through your live pipeline and pull forward anything in these categories:
- Discharge of conditions applications that are ready or nearly ready. If the information exists, submit. Do not hold a discharge back to bundle it with a later tranche — bundling now costs you the current-rate saving on the first one.
- Section 73 variations you know are coming. If a design change is settled and the application is drafted, get it in.
- Non-material amendments sitting in the “we’ll do it eventually” pile.
- Prior approvals where the scheme is defined.
- Permission in principle applications on smaller sites, where the flat fee is a rise — larger sites should wait, since the flat £825 is a saving.
The discipline is the same as any deadline exercise: list what is submittable, be honest about what is genuinely ready, and do not submit anything that will be rejected.
Then budget for 2027
Two further changes are coming and neither has a firm date.
Locally set fees. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 allows local planning authorities to set their own fees. The model is a national default plus variation up to a maximum of 30% above it where justified by evidence; anything higher requires the Secretary of State and robust evidence. Regulations and guidance are expected by the end of 2026.
So from some point in 2027, the same application will cost different amounts in different authorities, by up to 30%. For anyone operating across boundaries, that is a real budgeting variable for the first time.
A consultee surcharge. A separate consultation on a planning fee surcharge to fund statutory consultees — reported at around 10% of the national default — is due later in 2026. That would sit on top.
Taken together, budget 2027 planning fees at the new national default, plus up to 30% in some authorities, plus a possible 10% surcharge. That is a materially different number from what you spent in 2025.
Where the money is supposed to go
For context rather than comfort: the increases are part of a wider attempt to fix local authority planning capacity, alongside £55m over three years for building control workforce capacity, revised charging regulations enabling fuller cost recovery, and £5m of pathfinder programmes testing collaborative delivery models.
Whether that translates into faster determinations is the open question. The honest answer is that fee income has been ring-fenced before without producing capacity, and a 90%-cost-recovery fee only helps if the authority is resourced to spend it on caseload.
Two dates in the same window
If you are re-sequencing a submission programme anyway, note that 31 October 2026 is when the national scheme of delegation takes effect — after which minor residential of 1 to 9 dwellings on sites under 0.5 hectares must be decided by officers, with no committee referral possible.
The two changes interact usefully. Committee risk on small applications disappears at the end of October; the cost of submitting rises in December. Between those dates is a good five weeks to clear a backlog of discharges, variations and small applications under the old fees and the new certainty.
Five weeks. Go through the pipeline, pull forward every discharge, variation and amendment that is genuinely ready, and diarise the locally-set-fee regulations for the end of the year.
If you would like the pipeline swept properly rather than from memory, we do that as a short piece of work.