Twenty per cent. That’s a fair bit, particularly when some planning departments who claim to be tremendously overworked seem to spend an awful lot of time and money fighting doomed appeals following wrong refusals. It’s the latest in a long line of rising taxes around planning and property, e.g. many planning departments have already increased their income in recent years by bringing in hefty charges for pre-application advice (in my experience the money is normally more wisely spent on an expert planning consultant who is freer to give a more balanced and creative opinion).
The increase has just been announced for 17th January, so you have a full FIVE DAYS to get your application in!
Although some will see this as payment for a service, I see it as yet another tax-hike because developers are enhancing a vital community asset for this and future generations – the built environment – at their own private cost. If the collective community wants to police this in ever-finer detail with more and more red tape, then it should collectively pay for this.
It could be argued that this size of increase is unlikely to deter any homeowner from attempting to improve their greatest asset, nor any land-owner from trying to add some zeros to the value of their land. Governments have always sought to increase tax revenues. There’s a lot of money in obtaining planning permission and this move is part of a trend of tapping into what is seen as an easy target, in order to finance an ever-growing army of those in public pay.