The December 2026 Planning Fee Increase: What Is Changing

What is due to change on 8 December 2026

On 16 July 2026 the government laid draft regulations before both Houses of Parliament that would raise planning application fees across the board in England. The instrument — the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026 — amends the 2012 Fees Regulations and substitutes a whole new national fee table. If approved, it comes into force on 8 December 2026. For a London homeowner the headline is the householder application fee — the application most extensions, loft conversions and alterations to a single house use — which would rise from £548 to £575.

Two qualifications belong in the first breath. First, fees already rose this year: the £548 figure dates from the 1 April 2026 indexation, which we covered in a separate April bulletin, so December would be the second increase in a single calendar year rather than a revision of the first. Second, the instrument is still a draft. It requires approval by resolution of each House of Parliament before it can be made, and as of 31 August 2026 that approval had not been given. Every figure and date in this bulletin is therefore subject to Parliamentary approval.

The date that decides which fee you pay

The draft includes a transitional provision that makes the submission date decisive: the new fees apply only to applications made on or after 8 December 2026. An application made before that date pays the current fee, whenever the decision on it arrives.

For anyone budgeting a project this autumn, that turns 8 December into a real programme date. A householder scheme submitted in November would pay £548; the same scheme submitted after the change would pay £575, and the smaller fees below move at the same moment. One caution: an early submission only helps if the package is genuinely complete, because a package returned as invalid and submitted again as a fresh application on or after 8 December would be an application made after the change, and would pay the new fee. The date is a reason to start earlier, not to submit half-finished.

Prior approval stops being nearly free

The clearest change of principle sits in the prior approval routes. Today the prior approval application for a larger single-storey rear extension costs £249, and some prior approval applications currently carry no fee at all. The draft sets a flat £310 fee for most prior approval applications from 8 December, including those that are currently free; the larger home extension route rises from £249 to £310.

The £310 is a default rather than a universal figure. Electronic communications operators pay £760, a few categories carry their own higher fees, and where prior approval creates new homes the fee is charged per dwelling. For the routes a homeowner actually uses, though, the practical reading is simple: prior approval stays cheaper than a full application, but it stops being the nearly free route it has sometimes been.

The smaller line items move too

The post-permission fees rise more sharply in proportion. A householder request to discharge conditions — £89 today — becomes £125 per request, and £435 in any other case. Varying or removing a condition on a householder permission under section 73 becomes £112. These are small sums individually, but they arrive late in a project, and a scheme that involves several applications will feel the December schedule more than the headline householder rise suggests.

A lawful development certificate for a proposed project is charged at half the planning application fee, and the draft leaves that link intact — so the proposed-use certificate rises in step with the £575 figure, and the exact amount is worth confirming when you apply. Listed building consent stays free: the government has said it does not intend a national fee, reflecting the strong public interest in conserving the historic environment. The December amounts are then intended to hold until at least 1 April 2027, when annual indexation resumes on the new base.

What is not changing on 8 December

The new schedule is still national. The government describes it as a National Default Fee Schedule, designed to recover up to an estimated 90% of authorities' costs, and it applies to every local planning authority in England unless an authority later varies from it. The separately announced power for councils to charge up to 30% above the default, where evidence justifies it, is a later step: framework regulations for local fee setting are intended before the end of 2026, and locally varied fees would follow after that — not on 8 December. A possible surcharge of around 10% to fund statutory consultees is further off still, with a more detailed consultation promised later in the year. So if the regulations pass, Camden, Westminster and every other London borough would charge the same £575 on 8 December; local divergence is a story for later.

A dated bulletin, not a fee table

As with our April note, this is a dated record of a change, not a live fee schedule. The evergreen home for the full picture — statutory fees, fixed design fees and the third-party costs around them — is our planning application fees and costs guide, which we will keep updated as the position firms up. The figures here were current on 31 August 2026, while the regulations were still awaiting Parliamentary approval; if the timetable slips or the instrument is amended, the December figures move with it.

If you are weighing whether a scheme can honestly be ready to submit before 8 December, that is the sort of question a £395 route review settles: the right application type, the fee in force on the day, and a realistic view of whether the package can be complete in time — before drawings are commissioned, and without promising what the planning system cannot.