- What it covers
- Anything that is not householder work: new build, conversion, subdivision, commercial
- Decision period
- 8 weeks for minor, 13 weeks for major schemes of 10 dwellings or more
- Council fee
- £610 per dwelling for schemes under 10 units from 1 April 2026
- Our fee
- Fixed, from £1,000 for schemes up to five dwellings
- If refused
- 6 months to appeal
Outline or full?
A full application asks for permission for everything at once: the principle of the development and all the details. An outline application tests the principle first and reserves the details for later. Outline is cheaper to get wrong and slower to build out. Full is the right answer when you already know what you want to build, when the site is small, or when the principle is the fight and detail will not change the answer.
There is a third option people forget. Where the principle is genuinely uncertain and the site is valuable, a pre-application enquiry to the Council costs a few hundred pounds and buys you an officer's written view before you spend money on a scheme. It is not binding, and it is not always worth it, but on a contentious site it usually is.
What a full application has to prove
Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 is the whole game: applications are decided in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Everything else follows from that.
- Principle. Is residential, or commercial, or whatever you propose, acceptable here at all? Settlement boundaries, allocations, countryside policies and the presumption in favour of sustainable development.
- Housing land supply. If the Council cannot demonstrate a five year supply, the tilted balance in the National Planning Policy Framework applies and the case changes shape entirely. Knowing the Council's current position is worth more than any amount of design refinement.
- Design and density. Layout, plot sizes, relationship to neighbours, whether the scheme reads as part of the place.
- Access, parking and highways. Visibility splays, refuse collection, adoption standards. The highway authority is the consultee most likely to sink a small scheme.
- Drainage and flood risk. Sequential and exception tests where relevant, surface water strategy, sustainable drainage.
- Ecology. Protected species surveys where triggered, and biodiversity net gain, which now applies to most sites over 0.2 hectares.
- Amenity. Both for neighbours and for future occupiers, including internal space standards where the Council has adopted them.
Not on principle, usually. On the supporting documents nobody commissioned. A missing drainage strategy or ecology survey turns into a holding objection, the holding objection turns into a recommendation to refuse at week eight, and the scheme that was always acceptable is refused on grounds that were never about the merits. Front load the surveys.
What we do
- Review the development plan, the Council's five year supply position and the site's planning history
- Tell you which supporting documents the Council will require, before you submit, not after
- Write the planning supporting statement and, where needed, the design and access statement
- Co-ordinate the consultants you appoint for drainage, ecology, transport and heritage
- Complete forms, certificates, CIL forms and the local validation checklist
- Submit, manage the case officer relationship and respond to consultee objections in writing
- Advise on extensions of time, amendments and whether to withdraw and resubmit
Fees and timing
Our fee is fixed from £1,000 for schemes up to five dwellings, confirmed in writing before work starts. Larger schemes are quoted individually. The Council's own fee from 1 April 2026 is £610 per dwelling for schemes of fewer than ten units, and rises in bands above that; we confirm the exact figure in your quote.
Eight weeks for minor applications, thirteen for major. Councils routinely ask you to agree an extension of time. Agreeing is sometimes right and sometimes a way of losing your appeal window while the scheme drifts. We advise case by case, and if the Council simply runs out of road there is a non-determination appeal available.