How do government application fee changes affect online application submissions?
There will be a cut-off at the end of business hours on the last working day prior to the fee changes taking effect for application submissions using the previous fee values.
The payment process (if required) for an application must be completed (payment received and cleared by Planning Portal) before submission can take place, so will need to have happened prior to this cut off.
This is in line with the legislation for submitting applications electronically1 which states that applications received after the close of business hours are taken to have been received the next working day (i.e. when the new fees have taken effect).
After this point, the system will be unavailable so we can carry out work to implement the changes, and it will no longer be possible to update an application, progress a payment, or make a submission.
- For the 6 December 2023 changes - Tuesday 5 December at 17:00
- For the 1 April 2025 changes – Monday 31 March at 17:00
The point of submission can be checked on the system and in the ‘Submitted date’ field in the notification emails sent to the user and local authority.
Once the changes are made, and the system is made available, all application fee calculations will use the updated values set by government.
Any non-submitted applications will have their payment processes cancelled, and fee calculations reset so that users must recalculate using the updated fees and then pay for and submit the application.
- https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/595/article/2