What is the Financial Transaction Service?

The Financial Transaction Service (FTS) was launched in September 2018 and provides a standardised set of payment options across all local authorities, so applicants are able to pay quickly and easily.

Our dedicated team are on hand to process telephone payments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, so you can pay whenever is most convenient for you. Online and phone payments and bank transfers can also be made at any time to suit you. The option to pay by cheque is still available, but as there are quicker more convenient options available to you we encourage you to take advantage of them to get your application validated as quickly as possible.

You may already be familiar with our Nominate service¹, which allows you to nominate other people to pay planning application fees (e.g. your client or finance department). Nominate is also offered as a standardised payment method for all applications.

And finally, you even automatically receive a receipt for your payment, regardless of your chosen payment option. Simple.

We now send applications and payments to the relevant local authorities together, as soon as we have confirmed successful payment. This keeps the process rapid, succinct and tidy and prevents problems which arise from missing information. It also allows authorities to start validating your applications as soon as they get them. The application status in your Planning Portal account shows you whether the LPA has received your application and we also email you once it’s been sent from us and downloaded by them.

The charge for this service is £58.33 (+VAT), payable by the applicant on any application which attracts a fee of over £60. Applications such as Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs,) where no fee is payable, will be sent directly to the local authority with no service charge applied.