How much does planning permission really cost in Gravesham?

Most homeowners in Gravesham start with a simple question: what's the fee? The answer is £548 for a standard householder application. But that number is almost meaningless on its own — because it tells you nothing about what your project will actually cost you to get through planning. Tools like WhatCanIBuild exist precisely because the full picture is almost impossible to piece together without knowing what's already happened on your street.

The fee is just the beginning

You pay £548 to submit. You pay another £75.83 + VAT service charge if you apply through the Planning Portal online. That's the baseline. But most homeowners don't realise that if your application needs supporting documents — a heritage statement, a design and access statement, specialist drawings — those costs sit entirely outside the fee structure. And whether you need them depends entirely on your property.

Gravesham has 23 conservation areas. It borders the Kent Downs AONB. It has 312 listed buildings on record. If your home sits within or near any of these designations, the professional work required before you even submit can dwarf the application fee itself.

Conservation areas, AONB, and Article 4 — do you know what applies to you?

Here's where it gets complicated. Gravesham's proximity to the Kent Downs AONB means some properties sit on what's called Article 1(5) land — where permitted development rights are already restricted before any Article 4 direction even comes into play. Whether your property is affected changes what you can build without permission, and changes what supporting evidence a successful application needs.

Conservation area status affects external alterations that would otherwise be completely unremarkable. Listed building status introduces a separate consent process altogether — with no application fee, but potentially significant professional costs. And none of this is uniform. Two houses on the same road can sit in entirely different planning contexts.

What actually drives your real costs

The application fee is fixed. Everything else is variable — and the variables are stacked against homeowners who guess. Refused applications don't get refunds. Withdrawn applications don't get refunds either. If you submit without the right supporting material, you've spent £548 (plus the service charge) to find out you needed a heritage statement.

The deeper question isn't what the fee is. It's what your chances are, what similar projects nearby have been approved or refused for, and what your specific combination of constraints actually means for your project. That's what WhatCanIBuild surfaces — not just whether you're in a conservation area, but what that's meant in practice for projects like yours on streets like yours.

Typical decisions in Gravesham take around 8 weeks. That's 8 weeks of waiting on a submission that may need to be right first time.

What you don't know is what costs you

The £548 figure is easy to find. What's hard to find — without checking your specific property — is whether that fee is all you're spending, or just the start. WhatCanIBuild gives you the approval and refusal picture for your area before you commit to anything.