Submitting a Planning Application Through UK Planning Gateway

Submit a householder extension through the Planning Portal and, since September 2026, it adds £149 to the council fee. UK Planning Gateway (UKPG) is a newer online route that charges a flat £85, draws up your location and block plans for you, and asks the national form's questions in plain English.

The route has no bearing on whether you get permission. Your council validates and decides the application the same way whichever website delivered it. If you go this way, three things matter:

• The cost. The council fee is identical on every route; only the platform's charge differs.
• The steps. About half an hour from account to payment, once your drawings are ready.
• The checks. Applying yourself means checking the answers an agent would normally check for you.

Fees and rules below are for England. UKPG also covers Wales, where fees and some rules differ.

What UK Planning Gateway Is

• A private company, not a council service. According to UKPG it was founded by a practising architect, and it describes itself as not affiliated with the Planning Portal.
• Wide coverage. By its own account it has submitted to more than 200 planning authorities across England and Wales, delivering each application by whatever route that council accepts. Support depends on the application type and the council's setup, so confirm yours before you start.
• Built for homeowners as well as agents. Most of its marketing is aimed at architects, but a Personal account lets you prepare and submit a householder application yourself.
• Completeness checking, not approval. It checks your pack against national and local requirements. Validation is still your council's job, and no platform can promise approval.

First impressions are good. The platform is clean and modern, every step sits in one list that shows what's done and what's left, and the questions are written for people rather than planners. For someone applying for the first time, it's a friendly place to start.

UKPG also offers an optional Homeowner Reviews service, for professional input on your pack before you submit.

What It Costs Compared With the Planning Portal

Every route charges the same council fee. It's set nationally and goes to your planning authority. The difference is the charge the platform adds on top: the Portal bands its charge by application type, while UKPG charges one flat amount per submission.

Put together, a householder extension costs £697 through the Portal and £633 through UKPG. For works only in the garden or along the boundary the gap is much smaller, because the Portal puts those in its lower band.

The two charges buy different things:

• The Portal's banded charge pays, it says, for constraint checks during the application (flood risk and conservation areas, for example), document management and readiness checks.
• UKPG's flat charge includes the location and block plans it generates, with no separate map fee on its fee breakdown. On other routes you often buy those maps separately, typically for £10 – £40.

Council fees are reviewed regularly. The fee calculator, on the platform or the Portal, shows the figure that applies on the day you pay.

What You Need Before You Start

UKPG builds the forms and the maps. It doesn't draw your extension. Have these ready before you open an account:

• Confirmation that you need full householder permission, rather than permitted development or prior approval. If you're not sure, work through do you need planning permission first.
• Existing and proposed floor plans and elevations as PDFs, from your architect or technologist.
• The ownership facts: who owns the land, and whether anyone besides you needs to be served notice.
• The existing and proposed materials for walls, roof, windows and doors, taken from your drawings.
• A payment card, or the details of whoever is paying.

With all of that to hand the online part takes about half an hour. Without it, you'll stall at the uploads.

Setting Up the Application

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The Red Line Boundary: Slow Down Here

The red line outlines your application site. For a householder extension it goes round the house and garden and reaches the road, not just the footprint of the extension; purchasing OS maps for planning explains what it must include. A blue line marks other land you own, and you only need one if you own other land next to or near the site.

UKPG suggests the boundary from Land Registry title boundaries. Check it like this:

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The Plans It Generates

Save the boundary and, within seconds, the platform produces your site documents, watermarked DRAFT until you pay:

• A site location plan: OS-licensed, at 1:1250 on A4, with north point, scale bar, grid reference, site area and a small inset map.
• A block plan of the site.
• The application form: the national householder form, pre-filled from your answers.
• Notice forms, in a side panel, for when you're not the sole owner.

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Before you rely on the location plan, count the named roads on it. Many council checklists ask for at least two, plus the surrounding buildings, so compare your extract with your council's local list and check the title boxes carry your name and a project description.

Working Through the Form

There are fifteen steps: applicant, agent, description of works, location, pre-application advice, access and rights of way, parking, any link to council staff or members, trees and hedges, materials, biodiversity net gain, ownership certificates, the declaration, the site visit contact, and a Community Infrastructure Levy check. Most take seconds. Four need real attention.

You are the applicant. Leave the agent details empty unless someone genuinely acts for you. Wherever a later step asks who is signing or who the council should contact, the answer is you, as applicant.

The ownership certificate. Plain-English questions about who owns the land pick Certificate A, B, C or D for you, so answer them literally. Certificate A means you alone own everything inside the red line; if anyone else owns part of it, a co-owner included, notice has to be served on them before you submit. Knowingly or recklessly signing a false certificate is an offence, and submitting a planning application covers the certificates in more detail.

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Biodiversity net gain and CIL. Householder applications are exempt from biodiversity net gain in their own right, so pick the householder exemption, not de minimis, which is a separate test based on the area of habitat affected. Residential extensions under 100 square metres that don't create a new dwelling are exempt from the Community Infrastructure Levy, though a self-contained annexe counts as a new dwelling and is chargeable whatever its size. Telling the platform CIL isn't triggered adds the CIL Additional Information form to your pack. Leave it there: councils use it to establish whether you owe anything, and some won't validate an application without it.

Declaration and site visit. Open and read both, as with every pre-filled step. The declaration is your signed statement that everything in the application is true.

Uploads and the Completeness Check

Drag your drawings in. Each file can be up to 25 MB and is classified by document type, and a size meter tracks the whole pack against the roughly 10 MB that UKPG says most councils accept.

The validation panel then lists what your council commonly requires, based on national requirements and the council's own checklist, and tells you when the pack is ready. The completeness check confirms the expected document types are present. The content of your drawings is still your responsibility, or your designer's. Council validation checklists for householder work ask for both existing and proposed plans and elevations, so make sure both sets are in the pack.

The panel may also suggest optional documents. For a typical householder extension you usually won't need them:

• Design and access statement: only for householder work in a designated area, such as a conservation area or World Heritage Site, where the work creates a new dwelling or a floor area of 100 or more square metres.
• Heritage statement: often asked for instead in a conservation area, or for work affecting a listed building.
• Flood risk assessment: only if the site is in flood zone 2 or 3, is 1 hectare or more in zone 1, or the council has flagged a drainage problem.

Check your council's validation list, and if none applies, mark them not required and give the reason.

Before You Pay: The Checklist

Run these checks before you pay.

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• The red line covers your plot only and reaches the road.
• The location plan shows enough named roads for your council's checklist.
• You're named as the applicant, and you sign the ownership certificate and declaration as the applicant.
• The ownership certificate matches reality, with notice served on any other owner before you submit.
• Biodiversity net gain is answered with the householder exemption.
• The CIL step is answered and the CIL Additional Information form is in the pack.
• Existing and proposed plans and elevations are all uploaded.
• Any design and access statement or flood risk assessment marked not required has a genuine reason.
• The fee is for the right type of development, with no reduction claimed that doesn't apply.

Paying and Submitting

The Submit tab pulls everything together:

Download the submission record afterwards and keep it with your planning papers.

After You Submit

The council takes over. It checks the application is valid, and the statutory target for a householder decision, 8 weeks, runs from validation, not from the day you paid. The official record of your application sits with the council; UKPG keeps a copy of what you submitted.

Anything about progress or the decision goes to your council's planning department. Neighbour consultation, the officer's assessment and how to read the decision notice are covered in submitting a planning application.

Portal, UKPG or Direct to the Council?

The route rarely affects the outcome. It comes down to cost and to who's doing the submitting:

• UK Planning Gateway: the cheaper online route for a typical extension, with the plans drawn up for you and plain-English questions. A good fit if you're applying yourself.
• Planning Portal: the established national service, with its own banded charge. The Planning Portal guide walks through it.
• Direct to the council: by email or post, where your authority accepts it. Some charge an admin fee and others don't, and you assemble every document yourself, maps included. Your council's planning pages say whether they take direct submissions.

If your architect is submitting for you, the route is usually their call. Ask which one they use and what service charge gets passed on to you, because you're paying it either way.

External resource

UK Planning Gateway

Create a Personal account, check whether your council and application type are supported, and submit a householder application.

planninggateway.co.uk

External resource

Planning Portal: what it costs

The Planning Portal's current service charge bands and payment options, for comparing routes.

planningportal.co.uk