Planning Fees/Consultant gone horribly wrong

[kit279]

OK - deep breath

I paid a planning consultant nearly £2K to submit an application for 10 stables, a walker and a 60x20m arena, so as not to have the hassle of doing it myself.

The planning fees (paid directly to the council, not the consultant) were £1300.

Today, my planning consultant tells me that he has left the arena out of the application as it would cost £5K just to submit the plans to the council alone because the fees are calculated based on surface area. This rang some alarm bells to say the least. That's almost 25% of the cost of the arena build and no guarantee of getting permission.

I have been looking at the Planning fees for England and I am beginning to think someone somewhere has made a royal mess-up. The fees currently stand at £335 per 0.1 hectare which is 10,000m2. Therefore a 60x20m arena ought to cost £770 in fees by my reckoning.

Can anyone experienced shed some light on this for me?

I am really pretty annoyed about this... I paid for a planning service and have only had half the application that I wanted put in - surely they are supposed to notice if I'm being overcharged?!

Thoughts please.

 

[Tinypony]

What about ringing the council planning department?

 

[Cedars]

Are you joking?! Maple arenas who are doing ours charged £1000 for the WHOLE planning app, INCLUDING the fees to the planners.

 

[NeilM]

What about ringing the council planning department?

^^^^^^ This.

I used to work for an advertising company. Planners HATE advertising, so I used to regularly talk to the planning officers before starting to submit planning applications. One helpful and informative officer saved me close to a thousand pounds in fees, and I was granted planning permission.

 

[kit279]

Ok, I think I see where things have gone wrong.

My planning consultant has applied for full planning consent, not outline planning consent.

Is this necessary?

Can I not build an arena with outline consent?

 

[Cedars]

Ours is full consent..

 

[kit279]

Ok, I foresee a certain amount of shouting...

 

[Cedars]

Yes, I would be going totally nuts. I think it was about £4000 for a full land survey, plans and application...

And I believe the fee to the planning office is something like £375.

 

[0ldmare]

I don't know if the planning process has dramatically changed in the last few years but it only cost me a few hundred quid when I did it. I did my own plans - after all its only an oblong drawn in the right place on a special over size ordnance survey map (which you can get from the land registry for about £20 and a few questions. Definitely go for full planning, outline is useless and call the council to clarify costs asap!

 

[Booboos]

There may be some special circumstances in your area that I am not aware of, but ditto the above, we have put in for planning numerous times for stables, arenas, house extensions, etc and the fees were always just a couple of hundred pounds.

 

[lachlanandmarcus]

You would need full PP before you could go ahead and start work; outline PP just gives an indication as to whether the principle is accepted of building the sort of thing you want to build.

Which did you ask the consultant to apply for. If you didnt specify he might have assumed full PP.

PP fees are not normally that much so check as well if he has maybe also put in for the building warrant (which we also needed when we did our stables and for which the fees are much higher than the PP fees, mainly cos they are assessing structural things like foundations, drains etc and that means highly qualified peeps and more time).

Not to have included the arena you asked for, and not to have told you what he planned would be very very odd and not at all ok, have you discussed with him and clarified? If he cant provide answers is there any back up?

In the meantime, maybe you can talk to council about withdrawing current app and replacing it with a complete one with the arena in, they might well be willing to put the previous fee towards the new one.

TBH given how much info the stable cos and arena cos can provide even on the tech stuff, I would only think it worthwhile to use a consultant at appeal stage and put the money towards stable bling.

 

[honetpot]

Some of the firms that provide arenas,stables etc also provide the plans for the application. All that you may need extra is a site plan downloadable from OS.
A part from ringing and actuallly going to see your local planning office, the last time I did that thay were really helpful, I would do a consent search for a local yard or stables and see what plans they had to provide for their permission. Depending on your local authority this can be done on line. Its really interesting if you want to be nosey about the neighbours as well.
The fee seems very high, are you sure he is not charging a % of the build which architects charge when they are going to suppervise a build.

 

[martlin]

OP, I think you are either being conned... or your planning consultant is not very good/dim/talks out of their @rse....
For the whole project, the fees to the Council should be few hundred quid.

 

[perfect11s]

OP, I think you are either being conned... or your planning consultant is not very good/dim/talks out of their @rse....
For the whole project, the fees to the Council should be few hundred quid.

Yep that's about the long and short of it .... we have had these so called planning consultants look at things for us some are very good, others are worse than useless and can muck things up!!! all are good at taking money!! some times its worth informaly approching the planners and asking what would be acceptable before submitting an application but I would also ask the builders for advice first...

 

[soloequestrian]

The £700-odd fee that you mention sounds about right. It is done on surface area, so our arena was about that. It's incredibly frustrating - it costs far more to get planning for a flat area of sand than it does to put a house up...... I also did the plans myself and they went through with no problems.

 

[3DE]

If you use bark chippings instead of sand and rubber it's classed as biodegradable and you don't need planning. You do however if you want to put up lighting...

 

[kit279]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, short update.

Have spoken to council and they advised me that it would be £340 for the arena. They also said that if my planning consultant had included the arena in the application, then I wouldn't have had to pay anything extra at all. Unfortunately I have been "ill advised" - their words not mine. It is too late to change the application as the arena falls outside the red area earmarked on the plans for development.

To say I am annoyed would be an understatement. I paid the consultant to submit an application for stables, walker and arena. Without consulting me, he has left the arena off the application and now it can't be changed, without repaying the whole fee. I suppose he can submit the arena application separately (at his own cost, if I have my way) but even so...

I am pretty sure what I'm going to do about it but I would be interested to hear what other people would do in my situation.

 

[Cedars]

If you specifically asked for full permission for stables AND arena AND walker, and they HAVENT done this, then I would be insisting on my money back and I would then be taking them to their superiors.

 

[The Bouncing Bog Trotter]

I'm with Flamehead on this one - the Planning Consultant has not done what you asked him to do. I would be demanding a full refund of the fee paid to him and asking him to resubmit the plans for what you actually want at his cost.

The Council have told you that you have been ill-advised - I read that to mean that they think the advice given is c**p. Does the Planning Consultant belong to a professional body? This isn't a case of getting it just a little bit wrong, it sounds like he shouldn't be doing the job! I'd be talking to him about professional standards.

Did you ask the Council what the fee should be?

 

[Darkly_Dreaming_Dex]

Cant you withdraw the application, modify the plans and resubmit? at his expence of course our 25x40 school just cost £170 in August for the planning and i did the drawings myself (+£60 for printing) and it went straight through without a hitch

 

[ossy]

I work for a large multidisaplinary consultancy, I don't work in the planning department (i'm in environmental department) but we do work quite closely with them (I hope not the one you commissioned) I assume you have commissed them to undertake the submission with all the nessecary drawings, which will be over and above the planning chanrges, when we quote on jobs we usually break it down and say this is how much our fees will be to complete to work required to submitt the planning application and this is the external charge for planning submission expenses. I would go back to your consultant with a copy of the letter/e-mail that stated what you wanted and the quote they gave you and say actaully this was part of your orginal commison and not an additonal fee, it is by your error you have not already submitted the application for that and fight for them to do for you. the easier approach would be to tell them you have had other quotes and theres is far the most expensive and do not require them to compete this part of the work.