A crackdown on Tewkesbury planning applications is being brought in due to a huge swathe being submitted incorrectly.

From April 30 the council will be handing out charges of up to £150 for invalid applications.

Almost half (45%) of the plans received by Tewkesbury Borough Council have mistakes in them which render them invalid and waste officers time and taxpayers money.

The council said the impact of dealing with them is "significant", putting unnecessary pressure on the planning team and causing delays for other customers.

In 2021, 1,757 applications were submitted with 55% found invalid on receipt.

Improvements were made to try and reduce this and last year of the 1,439 applications received , 44% were invalid.

This means the council had to deal with 648 invalid applications which it said still represented a "significant number and proportion of time spent" on processing and returning them.

Furthermore 25% of the invalid submissions received in 2023 were never validated.

This is despite the council providing several resources to support applicants through the submission process, including validation guides, checklists, and 'how to' videos.

Some of the most common reasons were:

• Missing or incorrect ownership certificate.
• Incorrectly drawn red outline on site location plan (often only a building is outlined, not the application site).
• Missing or incorrect existing and proposed elevational plans.
• Existing block plan omitted.
• Block plans not showing sufficient detail, ie neighbouring properties.
• Missing heritage statements.

The new charges were approved at a meeting of the executive committee on March 20. The aim is to improve the quality of applications and increase the number of valid applications at first submission.

They will be £150 for major applications, £75 for minor applications and £45 for householder and other application types.

The council could collect anywhere between £29,000 to £97,000 based on 2023 figures.

It said the fees have been set at a level to cover the costs of officers' time dealing with invalid planning applications.

The charges will be applied if an application is made invalid and a satisfactory response to an invalid letter is not received within a 28-day period, and the application is returned to the applicant, or an invalid application is withdrawn after notification that it is invalid.

They will apply to all applications received after 5pm on Monday, April 30, 2024. The administration charge will be deducted from the planning fee refund.