Who Pays the Fees in a Land Deal: Solicitors, Agents, Surveys and Planning

Selling a field for development usually happens in one of four ways. An outright sale transfers the land as it stands, with no planning condition. A conditional contract is a binding agreement to buy once a condition, usually planning permission, is met. An option gives a developer the right, but not the duty, to buy within the terms of the agreement. A promotion agreement appoints a promoter to get planning, after which the land is sold on the open market. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, in its land journal on the professional standard for these agreements, describes the conditional contract buyer as the one who will usually be responsible for obtaining planning permission, and an option as similar except that the developer is not obliged to buy.

Two things stand out in that table. First, a seller who wants planning before selling carries every planning cost personally, with no certainty of success. Second, under the common forms of option and promotion agreement, many costs that look as though someone else is paying are recovered later from the money the landowner receives. The sections below take each cost in turn, then set out how it works with us.

Because the buyer's solicitor acts for the buyer and cannot act for you as well. Under the Solicitors Regulation Authority's code of conduct, a firm may not act for two clients whose interests conflict, and a land deal puts buyer and seller on opposite sides of the same document. Our guide to whether you need a solicitor to sell land explains those rules and how families choose a firm.

Who pays the bill does not change who the solicitor works for. The same code says a solicitor acts only on instructions from the client or someone properly authorised by the client. A contribution from the buyer towards your bill therefore pays for the work without buying the buyer any say in the advice you receive, and your solicitor takes instructions from you alone.

On an option or promotion agreement, your solicitor typically does this work:

• checks your title at HM Land Registry, the boundaries, any rights of way, covenants and mortgages, and gathers the deeds if the land is not registered;
• explains the agreement to you in plain terms and makes sure it reflects the heads of terms you agreed;
• deals with your mortgage lender's consent, where the land is mortgaged, and with any tenant or grazing licence;
• handles the later stages: the Section 106 agreement with the council, which you may be asked to sign as owner, and the completion of the sale;
• receives the purchase money on completion and pays it to you.

In practice, someone else often pays this bill, and the published guidance is candid about what happens next. FSP, a firm of solicitors, puts it this way in its guide for landowners: promoters and developers will generally pay the landowner's legal and property agents' fees for the negotiation of terms and documents, although such costs are then usually paid back to them out of the sale proceeds or deductions at the end. So under many agreements the contribution is an advance rather than a gift. How that works with us is set out near the end of this guide.

A land agent is a chartered surveyor who acts for you on the land side of the deal, and on an outright sale is paid a percentage of the price. Andrew Chandler, head of rural agency at Carter Jonas, answering a reader in the Farmers Weekly Business Clinic, put agent fees at typically 1% to 3% of the sale price, at the lower end for a straightforward sale through a local agent and reaching 3% only where joint agents are appointed. Marketing costs come on top, and the timing differs: the same answer explains that energy performance certificates, floorplans, photographs, brochures and sale plans are usually paid for up front, while many agents do not expect their own fee until the sale completes.

On a development deal the agent does different work. There is often no marketing at the start, because the developer or promoter has come to you. Instead the agent explains the proposal, the timetable and the planning route, keeps the family informed, and works with your solicitor on the land plan, the access and the practical terms of using the land while the planning work goes on. Under a promotion agreement, a second round of agency follows when the land is sold with permission, and that selling cost normally comes out of the sale proceeds.

A tax adviser is different again. Tax advice is about you, not the land: who owns it and in what shares, how it was acquired, what reliefs might apply and which tax year a sale falls into. It is arranged and paid for by you under every model, because only you can give your adviser the full picture of your affairs. The capital gains tax on the sale is also yours under every model. A price agreed at the start gives your accountant a fixed figure to work from long before completion, and the rates and reliefs are covered in our guide to tax when selling land for development.

The buyer, under every model. The buyer's solicitor investigates the title, makes the searches of the council's and the water company's records and any environmental search it wants, prepares the transfer, and registers the purchase. All of that is the buyer's own work for the buyer's own protection, and none of it is charged to the seller.

Registration is a good example of how the law places the cost. If your land has never been registered at HM Land Registry, which is still true of some farmland held in the same family for generations, a sale triggers compulsory first registration. Section 6 of the Land Registration Act 2002 puts the duty to apply on the 'responsible estate owner', defined as the transferee or grantee, within two months of the sale. The transferee is the buyer.

HM Land Registry charges on a sliding scale, Scale 1, based on the price or value. Its published fees are modest beside the other costs of a land deal.

The last column matters only if you choose to register unregistered land before any sale. HM Land Registry charges a lower fixed fee for voluntary first registration, roughly a quarter to a third below the full fee depending on the value, and some owners do it so that the title is ready when a deal comes along. That is your own cost and your own choice. Where land is registered already, an option is protected on your title by a notice, which the option holder applies for as part of its own legal work.

Whoever runs the planning pays for the surveys. The council will not register an application for new homes until it has the reports its local validation list asks for, and on an ordinary field at the edge of a village that usually means most of the following. Each is commissioned from a specialist consultant, and several can only be done at certain times of year.

Each report is drawn up by a specialist consultant, and the planning consultant, architect and sometimes a barrister add their own fees. On a larger site the full cost of getting from a first survey to a decision, including any appeal, runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds. With us, all of it is ours to pay, and none of it is your concern.

Under the common form of option, the same costs are paid by the developer as they arise but are usually deducted from the price on completion. Under a promotion agreement they are paid by the promoter first and repaid out of the sale proceeds before the landowner is paid. Either way, the more the surveys find, the more there is to come off the figure at the end.

Planning application fees for housing are fixed by national regulations, not by each council, and are charged per home, or per tenth of a hectare for an outline application. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes the figures each year, and its schedule for fees from 1 April 2026 raised them by 3.8%, the Consumer Prices Index for September 2025. The figures below are for the erection of dwellinghouses, which the regulations call category 1.

Outline permission settles the principle of homes on the land and is charged by area. The details of layout, appearance and landscaping, called reserved matters, follow later and are charged by the number of homes. Most schemes then have conditions to discharge, each with its own fee.

A larger site is charged on the sliding scale for its area: an outline application on 10 hectares, about 25 acres, comes to £16,291 plus 75 tenths of a hectare at £196, or £30,991. Two further points apply to every application made in England.

• There is no free second attempt. A refused or withdrawn application used to be resubmittable once without a fee. The 2023 amending regulations, in force from 6 December 2023, removed the exemptions from fees for repeat applications, raised major fees by 35% and others by 25%, and allowed fees to rise each April with inflation, capped at 10%. An amended scheme now pays the full fee again.
• Higher fees are planned. Burges Salmon, a law firm, reports that draft regulations laid before Parliament on 16 July 2026 would bring in a new national default schedule for applications made on or after 8 December 2026, if approved, aimed at councils recovering 90% of their estimated costs, with councils able to seek rates up to 30% higher where evidence justifies it.

An appeal is paid for by whoever makes it, and the main cost is professional time rather than any fee. A planning consultant prepares the case, and at a hearing or inquiry a barrister and expert witnesses on highways, landscape or housing supply may be needed. The larger and more contested the scheme, the higher that bill.

Each side normally bears its own costs, whatever the result. The government's planning practice guidance states that parties in planning appeals normally meet their own expenses. The exception is an award of costs, which the Planning Inspectorate can make against the council, the appellant or another party where one has behaved unreasonably and that behaviour has directly caused another party unnecessary or wasted expense. Most applications for costs are decided by the Inspector who decides the appeal, and an award can also be made without any application where the behaviour justifies it.

That is why it matters who the appellant is. If you apply for planning yourself and appeal a refusal, the bill and the risk of an award of costs are yours. Under a conditional contract, an option or a promotion agreement, the developer or promoter is usually the appellant and pays, though under a common option or a promotion agreement that spending is normally among the costs taken back out of the price or the proceeds if planning succeeds.

With us, an appeal is ours to decide on, ours to fund and ours to run. We make the appeal in our own name, so the cost of the case and any risk of an award of costs sit with us, and the agreement stays alive while the appeal is decided. The appeal routes and the Inspectorate's timescales are set out in our guide to what happens if planning is refused.

No. Stamp duty land tax is a tax on buying, and the GOV.UK guidance sets it out as a charge on the person who buys, whichever model is used. A seller pays none. Fields, paddocks and yards are usually taxed at the non-residential rates, which cover agricultural land that is part of a working farm or used for agricultural reasons and any other land that is not part of a dwelling's garden or grounds. For a freehold, the non-residential rates are nothing on the first £150,000, 2% on the next £100,000 and 5% on the rest.

The seller's tax on a land sale is capital gains tax, or corporation tax where a company owns the land, on the gain. Stamp duty land tax never comes off the price you receive, though under some agreements it is among the costs a developer weighs when deciding what it can pay.

Usually not on the sale, but yes on most professional bills. HMRC's notice on opting to tax explains the starting point: sales and leases of land are normally exempt from VAT, which means no VAT is charged on the price, but the seller cannot normally recover the VAT on its own costs. The position changes only if the land has been opted to tax.

• An option to tax is a choice, not an automatic status. The person supplying the land decides to make it, so that VAT on the costs of that land can normally be recovered. Once made, supplies of that land, including a sale, are normally standard rated. For VAT, land includes buildings on it.
• It is notified to HMRC. The notice says notification should normally be made within 30 days of the decision. An option can be revoked within six months in limited cases, or once more than 20 years have passed.
• Some sales are excluded. HMRC lists supplies where an option to tax does not apply, including land sold to a relevant housing association that certifies homes will be built on it, and land sold to someone who will build a home for their own use.
• Fees carry VAT for most sellers. A solicitor's or land agent's bill normally has VAT added. A seller making an exempt sale cannot normally claim that VAT back, so it is part of the real cost of the fees. A VAT registered seller whose land is opted to tax is in a different position.

Being registered for VAT as a farming business does not by itself mean the land is opted to tax. An option has to be decided on and notified to HMRC in writing for that land, so your own records, checked by your accountant, show whether one exists. This guide explains how the rules work; it is not VAT advice.

Section 106 agreements and the Community Infrastructure Levy are paid by the developer that builds the homes, not by a landowner selling the land, although as owner you may be asked to sign the Section 106 agreement, since its obligations run with the land itself. Our guide to Section 106 and CIL explains how each is calculated and why the levy's liability notice may land on your doormat even though the bill is not yours.

Promoter fees are a different matter, because they come out of the landowner's money. Under a promotion agreement the land is sold once permission is granted, and the sale costs, the promoter's recovered planning costs and the promoter's fee, often a percentage of what is left, are deducted before the balance reaches the owner; the order of those deductions, with a worked example, is in our guide to promotion agreement fees and deductions.

The common form of option works in a similar way at the end: the price is worked out from the market value once planning is secured, less a discount, the planning costs, the option fee and the fees the developer advanced. That is why the question of who pays the fees has two parts: who writes the cheque at the time, and whose figure it comes out of in the end.

1. First conversation and desktop review. We look at your land from records and maps and tell you plainly whether it has a case. It costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.
2. A written price and heads of terms. The price, set above what the land is worth today in its current use, is written down as a figure before any planning money is spent. There is nothing for you to pay at this stage.
3. Your own solicitor and land agent. You choose them. We pay towards both of their fees, so having the agreement explained and checked properly costs you nothing.
4. The option is protected on your title. Our solicitors apply to HM Land Registry for the entry, as part of our own legal work.
5. Surveys, application fees, consultants and any appeal. All of it is ours to commission, run and pay for, and the risk is ours too. On a larger site that spending can reach £300,000. None of it is deducted from your price, and the agreement stays in place while an application or appeal awaits a decision.
6. The Section 106 agreement. Where you are asked to sign as owner, we negotiate the agreement with the council and pay for it, and we pay towards your solicitor reviewing it.
7. Completion. When permission has been secured, we complete our purchase and the agreed price is paid to you through your solicitor, with milestones set out in the agreement. As buyer, we pay our own legal costs, the stamp duty land tax and the Land Registry fee for our purchase.
8. If planning is not achieved. The agreement ends, the land stays yours, and there is nothing to repay: not the surveys, not the application fees, not any appeal.

Set against the table at the top of this guide, the difference is where the costs end up. Nothing is advanced to you to be taken back later, and there is no list of deductions to read at the end. The two costs that remain yours are the ones no buyer can carry for you: your own tax advice and the tax on your gain.

Our option agreement guide explains the agreement itself in plain English, and our comparison of option, promotion and outright sale sets the three routes side by side. If you would like to know whether your own land has a case, a free desktop review is the simplest place to start.