Planning Permission: Fees and Charges
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether local authorities will be able to set planning fees to (a) make a profit for their general fund and (b) reduce the subsidy of planning services from the general fund.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook
The Planning and Infrastructure Act provides the Secretary of State with the power to delegate the setting of planning fees to local planning authorities.
Fees are to be set on a cost-recovery basis and cannot be used to generate a profit for an authority’s general fund. Income from planning fees must be used to deliver an authority’s statutory planning decision-making functions and cannot be used to cross-subsidise other planning services, which should continue to be funded from the general fund.
The process for local fee setting will be set out in regulations this year. We will shortly also be consulting on a national default fee, which will be the baseline from which local planning authorities can vary and set their own fees.
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