Planning Circular 2/2022 The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications) (Scotland) Regulations 2022

5. Discretionary fees

The Regulations extends the range of services for which an authority may introduce charges for. Some of these charges are up to the authority to set out and others are as prescribed in the regulations.

5.1 Pre-application discussions

5.1.1 Planning authorities may only charge fees for pre-application discussions if has first published information which sets out:

• the services for which a fee is to be charged (this may, for example, specify who is to be involved in discussions, how feedback is to be provided to prospective applicants and relevant timescales);
• how the fees for each level of service have been calculated; and
• under what circumstances the authority may waive or reduce the fee.

5.1.2 This information must be published on the authority's website.

5.2 Non-material variations

5.2.1 The Regulations provide that an authority may introduce a charge of £200 for each request for a non-material variation to a planning permission under Section 64 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997.

5.3 Conditions (excludes AMSC applications relating to planning permission in principle)

5.3.1 An authority may introduce a fee of £100 to provide written confirmation that a condition has been complied with. Similarly an applicant may wish seek written confirmation of compliance with a more than one condition within each request which will result in a single fee of £100 being payable.

5.4 Retrospective applications

5.4.1 Authorities may introduce a surcharge for applications for planning permission where the application relates to development carried out without permission (section 33 of the 1997 act). The fee is that which would be charged if the application were for planning permission for that development plus a surcharge of up to 25%. Planning authorities are required to set out the circumstances whereby the surcharge shall be applied or not applied.