Building control fee hikes

Thursday 25 January 2024

The Department and Planning Authority is the latest States body to increase its fees, following others which have already put their prices up this year.

The DPA said it has agreed to increase both planning and building control fees for the first time since January 2020 and September 2021 respectively.

Both sets of fees will go up by 7.3% from Monday 5 February.

The increase is based on the rate of inflation for the 12 months between June 2022 and June 2023.

Inflation is currently lower, with the all items RPI at 6.3% at the end of December, but the rate for the increased fees had already been set by the DPA.

In addition to the increases in planning and building control fees, there has been a couple of other changes made.

The cost of making a planning application within fee category 3E has been amended to now include the application fee for the removal of a hedge, meaning the overall fee is now lower for this type of application.

A new planning application fee category 8A has been added, which will include the installation of larger scale renewable energy equipment on land in the open air or on redundant glasshouse sites. This was previously in the general fee category 9 which is calculated on site area, so this may lead to a lower fee for these applications.

All the changes will come into effect from 5 February 2024.