Councils took almost £200m in planning performance agreement fees over three years, HBF finds

Councils in England and Wales received almost £200m in planning performance agreement fees between 2022 and 2025, according to a Home Builders Federation report published in October that calls for national guidance on when the agreements should be used.

The HBF said a Freedom of Information exercise found local authorities took an average of almost £600,000 each in fees for planning performance agreements (PPAs) over the three years. Scaled up across the country, the federation estimated the total at almost £200m.

The report, produced with Paragon Development Finance, received responses from 85 councils. Twelve of them took more than £1m over the period, seven of which were in London. The City of London received the most, at almost £5m.

Neil Jefferson, chief executive of the Home Builders Federation, said: "At a time when the Government is seeking to increase housing delivery and unlock more development, the planning system needs to provide greater certainty rather than additional barriers and costs."

What a PPA is

Government planning practice guidance describes a PPA as a project management tool that local planning authorities and applicants can use, and says it can in principle be used for any application. The guidance says an agreement must be in place before a planning application is submitted.

Authorities may charge for the administrative work involved in agreeing and implementing a PPA, and the guidance says any such charge is in addition to the planning application fee. Where a PPA exists, the statutory time limits for determining the application are displaced.

The HBF report says PPAs and extensions of time are being used to take major applications beyond the statutory 13-week determination period. The federation said this in effect creates a two-tier system favouring applicants able to pay for enhanced engagement.

Neal Moy, managing director of Paragon Development Finance, said: "PPAs have a useful role in complex schemes, but they should not compensate for underlying capacity constraints."

In his foreword, Moy said PPAs were designed by the Local Government Association as a tool for agreeing key tasks, responsibilities and resourcing. Paragon Development Finance said it has provided more than £4bn of funding since 2018, supporting the delivery of over 16,000 homes.

The recommendations

The HBF set out five recommendations: greater transparency over PPA income and expenditure; consistency across local planning authorities; national guidance on the appropriate use of PPAs and extensions of time; monitoring of local planning authority performance after locally set planning fees are introduced; and strengthening planning capacity and capability.

The fourth recommendation follows the Government's response on planning application fees, which said the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 introduced new powers for local fee setting.

Staffing background

The report builds on the HBF's Planning on Empty research, published in August 2026, which found councils operating at an average of 80% of full staffing levels. That report estimated 2,660 planners were needed to bring local planning authorities to full capacity, up from a gap of 2,200 the previous year.

Year	Planners needed to reach full capacity
Previous year	2,200
2026	2,660

Releasing that research in August, the HBF said 90% of local planning authorities were operating below full staffing capacity and only around 20% of major applications were being determined within the statutory 13-week target. The federation noted at the time that the Government has committed to recruiting 1,400 additional planners during this Parliament.

Jefferson said in August: "Planning reform will only succeed if local planning authorities have the staff and resources to deliver it."

The PPA report is available to download from the HBF website.