Pre-application planning advice service

Before you apply for planning permission, you can choose to pay for pre-application advice.

Pre-application advice can help you:

• meet with a Planning Officer to discuss your plans
• understand how planning policies and other requirements affect your project
• identify potential problems early on and find solutions
• tell you at an early stage whether you’ll need specialist advice or surveys
• reduce the risk of submitting an invalid application
• save you time and money on plans and application fees by letting you know if your proposal is likely to be acceptable

Paying for pre-application advice is optional. You can submit a planning application without having it.

What you’ll need to provide

You should provide as much information about your project as possible. The more detail you can provide about your proposal, the more accurate and useful our advice will be.

You must provide a location plan that shows the site with the site boundary highlighted.

You can also provide (optional): 

• scaled drawings (existing and proposed) - these should clearly show the proposed changes
• up to date photos of the site 
• any other documents that you think might be useful

Apply for pre-application advice online

Apply for pre-application advice

Any pre-application advice we give you is non-binding. It doesn’t affect how we assess any future full planning application. Read our pre-application advice disclaimer for more information. 

Costs

What you will pay for pre-application advice depends on the size of your project. 

You can:

• check our fees for pre-application advice before you start
• start the form and answer questions to calculate the cost - you don’t have to submit the form

When we’ll respond

We aim to respond within 4 weeks of your submission.

If the information you submit is incomplete or lacks crucial details, we might take longer to respond.

Who can use this service?

This service is available for householders, businesses, and developers. We can help you from the first design stages of your project to construction and completion.

If your previous application has been refused permission, you can use the pre-application advice service to get advice on a new proposal. We won’t be able to discuss any previous applications.

How it works

Your pre-application advice request will be assigned to a planning officer who will be your main contact. You can request to meet with them or for written advice.

Meetings

Our meetings take place remotely, online, and we don’t need to visit the site.

Written advice

The written advice will provide a summary of the relevant policies along with an assessment of the proposed development against those policies. 

For larger schemes the advice note will also provide details on the information that is likely to be required to support any future planning application. 

Major developments

For major proposals and schemes, we will help:

• draft and agree heads of terms for a Section 106 agreement
• organise community consultation and Councillor engagement

Confidentiality

We won’t put your request for pre-application advice or our response on our website.

We can be asked to provide information about pre-application advice queries under Freedom of Information Regulations (FOI) or Environmental Information Regulations (EIR). If someone requests information, we must decide whether to release it.

You can tell us in the form if you think that any information in your pre-application advice proposal is commercially sensitive or confidential for some other reason. You’ll need to tell us the relevant legislation exceptions or exemptions.