The April 2026 Planning Fee Increase: What Changed

What changed this April

From 1 April 2026, the fee to submit a householder planning application in England rose to £548, up from £528. That is the application most London home projects use — a rear or side extension, a loft conversion, a change to the front elevation, or almost any alteration to a single house that needs planning permission. If you are budgeting a project this year and you looked up the figure a few months ago, it is now out of date by £20.

The Lawful Development Certificate fee, used to confirm in writing that a proposed project is permitted development and needs no planning permission at all, rose in step to £274 — half the householder fee, as it has been. Listed building consent, worth noting for the many listed homes across Hampstead, Highgate and the prime central boroughs, still carries no application fee, though the drawings and heritage justification behind it are more involved.

These are national figures set by government, not by the council and not by us. Under the national schedule in force on 29 July 2026, every local planning authority in England charges the same statutory fee for the same type of application.

Why April indexation is no longer the only recheck date

Automatic annual indexation was introduced by the 2023 amendment to the Fees Regulations 2012 (regulation 18A) and has operated from 1 April 2025. The April uplift tracks the Consumer Prices Index for the preceding September, rounded to the nearest pound and capped at 10% in any one year. The September 2025 CPI figure was 3.8%, which produced the April 2026 schedule.

That annual mechanism is no longer the only date to watch. In July 2026 the government announced that it intends a further national increase before the end of the year, subject to Parliamentary approval, and later regulations for local fee variation. The £548 figure in this dated bulletin was current on 29 July 2026; it is not a promise about the fee when a later application is submitted.

Use our planning application fees and costs guide as the evergreen owner, and confirm the current national and borough schedule before committing a figure to the budget.

The council fee is one of two costs — and neither is the build

It helps to keep three numbers separate. The statutory fee — £548 under the schedule in force on 29 July 2026 — is what you pay the local authority to have your application decided. It is not the design fee, and it is nowhere near the build cost. We set this out in full in our guide to planning application costs in London, but the short version is worth repeating because the statutory fee is often mistaken for the whole cost of getting permission.

The second cost is the professional fee: the design work, the drawings, the planning strategy and the submission itself. On a straightforward London householder scheme our fixed-fee packages start from a £395 route review, so the design fee typically dwarfs the statutory fee rather than the other way around. There is also a separate Planning Portal service charge of a little over £90 if you submit online, which goes to the Portal, not the council.

The third number — the build cost — is a different order of magnitude again and is settled much later, with a contractor, once the design is fixed. The statutory fee is real money and worth getting right, but in the arithmetic of a whole project it is a small line.

What it means for a London homeowner

For a single householder application, the £20 rise is not going to change whether a project goes ahead. Where the indexation matters more is on schemes that involve several applications — an application plus a lawful development certificate to settle a permitted-development question, or a listed-building consent alongside a planning application, or the discharge of conditions after approval. Most of those carry their own statutory fee, and the fees that apply are each indexed (listed building consent is the exception — no fee, but its own drawings), so the total moves a little more than the headline figure suggests.

It also matters for anyone budgeting a project a year or more ahead — a purchase you intend to extend, or a scheme you are phasing. The sensible assumption is that the fee may change before submission: a further national increase is planned for later 2026, subject to Parliamentary approval, and later local variation may follow. Confirm the schedule in force and keep a modest allowance rather than pinning the budget to the April 2026 number.

A dated bulletin, not the current fee schedule

This article records what changed in April 2026. It should not compete with the evergreen guide or be treated as a live fee table, particularly while further national and local-fee regulations are planned.

If you are planning work in London and want the statutory fee, the design fee and the likely route set out clearly before you commit, that is exactly what a short route review is for. The figures above were current on 29 July 2026; if you are reading later, confirm the fee in force before you budget.