Housing minister Gavin Barwell has strongly hinted he will allow councils to raise planning fees in response to industry demands for an improved service.
Planning application fees have not risen since 2011, leaving some councils with deficits in their planning departments as they struggle to retain staff, leading to delays in processing planning applications.
Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference, Barwell said: “I said I wasn’t going to make any announcements, so I tried in my speech to indicate a degree of sympathy with that argument.”
He added: “I don’t think we are going to move to a model where we just let councils charge whatever they wish to charge. This is one of the very rare issues where nearly everyone I talk to agrees. Lots of developers do say, ‘I would quite happily pay a premium charge if I got a premium service in return for it’.”
A British Property Federation survey last year found that two-thirds of private sector respondents would be willing to pay higher fees.
Barwell said if he allows councils to raise planning fees, they will have to guarantee that cash will be reinvested into resourcing planning departments.
“I would want an assurance from the councils concerned that every single penny that they raised from the extra fees would be spent on additional spending in planning departments,” he said. A new planning package would be linked to performance on major and minor applications and how quickly section 106 agreements are negotiated, he added.
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