Decision details

To Introduce new additional charges for:

Invalid planning applications
Meetings about site allocations
History searches and historic documentation
Confirmation that conditions have been discharged

To agree to the implementation of:

·  A charge for requests to confirm that conditions have been discharged on a specific site/property.

·  A charge for Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) advice.

·  A new range of charges for history searches and historic document provision.

·  A charge for requests from developers/landowners to meet with Planning Policy about land and site allocations.

By their nature the charges proposed are discretionary and therefore customers are not required to take up these services and can choose not to.  There are alternatives available to customers and applicants such as self-serve, other statutory application/process or to engage a private specialist agent or solicitor.

Planning already has a number of very successful and well used discretionary charges in place such as pre-application advice, planning performance agreements and S106 monitoring fees; customers and agents expect to pay for additional services in Planning which is the norm across all Local Planning Authorities.

The fees proposed are calculated on a cost recovery basis following robust analysis of time spent by officers on certain tasks and the cost of delivering services including corporate and service on-costs.  For the most part charges are calculated using an officer hourly rate figure and aim to be reasonable.

The option to continue to offer all the above services for free was considered, but as legislation allows councils to charge for this work and other Local Planning Authorities are already doing so this means that B&NES would not be maximising Planning service resources by covering the cost of delivering these services, particularly as they are discretionary, and customers can choose not to use the service or self-serve.

Another alternative would be to stop delivering these services altogether, however this would be removing the choice customers have to request the service in the first place, albeit for a reasonable fee.  This is possiblly less fair than continuing to offer the services but also raise a charge.