Planning Portal Reviews 

If I could give zero stars I would.
Poor information provided on an 8 minute call. The member of staff had little knowledge to offer.
SCAM

I wish I had read these reviews before paying for their so-called “Planning Consultation.”

I expected a qualified planner to review our extension plans and clarify whether our house extension fell under Permitted Development or needed full planning. What we got instead was a rushed 25-minute call with an adviser - Ms Kiran Purewal - who clearly hadn’t reviewed any of our material, spoke in vague generalities, and gave us incorrect advice - LATER CONTRADICTED BY THE LOCAL AUTHORITY ITSELF! We even provided documents (floor plans etc.) prior to the call to ensure we receive bespoke guidance but I doubt they were reviewed.

We were explicitly told that our extension plans were within PD. This turned out to be wrong. When challenged, the Planning Portal rewrote the record and claimed they had advised the opposite - something both of us on the call can categorically disprove.

Worse still, there is no written summary or audio record of the consultation, so they can rewrite history at will and refuse refunds. It’s Kafkaesque: you pay for “expert guidance,” get misinformation, then they deny what was said and hide behind small print and generic mailboxes so there’s no accountable individual to speak to. They operate as an unregulated private company masquerading as an official government service, exploiting public trust in the planning system.

After checking reviews, I now realise this is not an isolated case. The Trustpilot rating speaks for itself. Repeated patterns: inaccurate advice, unqualified call-handlers, refusal to refund, and stock replies about “reasonable care and skill.” Dozens of users describe the same experience - paying for guidance that adds confusion, not clarity.

This is not a professional advisory service. It’s a lightly disguised referral funnel and a monopoly-backed cash extraction scheme that thrives on public misunderstanding. Local authorities’ planning officers themselves quietly acknowledge that the “Planning Portal advice service” is not official, authoritative or indeed reliable.

If you value accuracy, accountability, or even basic integrity, go directly to your local planning authority or hire a qualified planning consultant. This service should not be trusted with anything beyond uploading PDFs.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

I booked a paid consultation through the portal to get advice on installing a storage container on the edge of a sports field. Unfortunately, the experience fell short of expectations. The adviser openly admitted not knowing the specific planning regulations, describing them as a 200-page specialist document she hadn’t read.

Her initial suggestion was that pre-approval might be suitable, but she wasn’t sure it would cover my case. She then defaulted to recommending a full planning application without providing any real reasoning or tailored guidance. For £114, I expected clear, expert advice — but I left with more uncertainty than when I started.

The call, scheduled for 30 minutes, ended almost 20 minutes early, which only added to the feeling that my query wasn’t given the time or effort it deserved. Disappointing overall.

Terrible, I’m really not sure what you’re paying the planning portal £85 for! they literally do nothing with your planning application other than submit it to the local council. I submitted an “invalid” application to my local council through them even after paying an additional £75 for a 30 minute call. I requested to just cancel my whole application it was ridiculous. I logged a complaint and a Paul jones has been responding, basically fobbed me off stating “I had agreed to their terms and services” that they handled my planning application with “ reasonable care and skill”, I’m not being funny but if there was all this “skill and care”, why was my application so miserably invalid?. There criminals, take your £85 fee and run with it. Your best off going direct to the local council, these folks add zero tangible value.

Amazing and such clear advice from Jazmine. Highly recommend. Unlike our local planning authority, Jazmine worked for us rather than against us. She provided clear and jargon free advice about how to move forward with our project, which we now feel excited about rather than daunted by. She told us all the things we could do rather than focusing on all the things we can't do. Living in a national park, she tailored the advice and went above and beyond to make sure we got what we wanted out of the call. I wish we'd used this service long before! Thank you Jasmine. She's an asset to your service.

Applied for planning through the planning portal. They came back a month later saying that he fee was actually much higher than we paid and we needed to pay more, which we couldn’t afford. We withdrew our planning request but the planning portal didn’t refund their £80 ‘fee’ (eventhough the application didn’t go through). Spoke to the council and they said it’s a planning portal conversation, planning portal said it’s nothing to do with them and they can’t refund (eventhough they took the money). Overall, awful service, awful customer support and refusing to refund fee for a service that wasn’t used? Avoid

I spoke to Faith (for the second time) and found her to be very helpful and well informed about my question around AC installation on a locally listed house in a conservation area in London. She had sight of all my previous planning applications and council engagements, I felt like the information I was getting was informed and relevant. I now have a list of requirements to confirm and work with, so I feel that it was a positive and useful exercise. Only gave four stars because I don't yet know exactly what we're hoping to install and how, so we can't conclude things immediately.

John really helped my wife and I explained everything in great detail was very informative.

Had a very helpful 1/2hr call (£72) to walk me through if I could get planning permission or not and the process to follow to get permission. Having spent hours on line trying to understand it to then speak with a really helpful chap called John who was so easy to speak with, so helpful cant thank him enough.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I booked the Planning call, but I was genuinely impressed. The advisor I spoke to was clear, and genuinely helpful cut through the noise and focused on what mattered. Solid solid advice that helped me understand exactly how to approach my project.

I echo the other comments and feedback here. They DO NOT provide any advice and take a condescending attitude and just repeat they don't offer advice - if you get a chance to actually ask a question. Firstly they were late, then the first 2 minutes I was patronizingly explained my property was in a preservation area even though my query had nothing to do with that. I then tried to ask my questions and was cut off at every point with "we don't give advice". I paid £72 for 8 minutes for absolutely nothing. This is nothing more than a SCAM to prey on people who are inexperienced with the planning application process. Use ChatGPT for free which will give you answers to most questions you may have regarding Planning Applications, for anything else DO NOT use this service. It's also disappointing that Local Authority Planning and Building Control highlight this as a general advice service.

The planning portal is now very expensive to use but doesn't even work properly.

I gave all the details for the type of application I was making and it told me what forms I needed to complete. It missed two essential forms and my application was invalid. This is just basic stuff and should be the very least the portal service offers, it adds even more delay to a local authority planning service that is barely functioning as it it

Absolute complete waste of time
Do not bother. Complete waste of money. Get no more information than find online or local council site. They are not willing to talk you through or find solutions. Just tell you - planning needed, pay the fee. I was on the phone for less than 10 minutes but had to pay over £100 for that. Do not bother or use.

After spending ~1.5 hours on my application I made a minor change to the title to make it more descriptive (which the portal readily allows you to do) then the entire application was lost and no longer accessible.
I restarted the application from scratch, and got to the part where it asks you to use the Requestaplan tool to specify a plan. After persevering for another ~1 hour I eventually gave up as the Requestaplan tool is terrible, as evidenced by its 100% one star trustpilot reviews.
I phoned the council asking them what to do and they recommended that I use use downloadable forms rather than the planning portal.
Based on my experience the planning portal cannot be used for anything useful (either looking up information or submitting a planning request). To save every ones time it should be taken down and replaced which something that is fit for purpose.

If I could allocate zero stars I would do so. Absolutely unfit for purpose. The first box asks you to 'create your location plan'. If the site is anything other than a simple rectangle you need to use freehand plotting...THIS DOES NOT WORK. After the first few clicks the polygon snaps back to the start and a message informing you that 'your polygon appears to have intersecting lines' appears and you have to start all over again. This sequence repeats ad infinitum! Additionally you have no ability to move the map base around the screen once plotting has started. It is quite clear that the idiots producing this software have never actually used it in a real life situation. Another failing is that there is an option to create labels to add to your location plan. Having created the label/s and saved the plan, the plan, when downloaded does not contain the labels! I have previously reported these issues directly, on the phone, to a Planning Portal helpline but it was quite clear that there was absolutely zero intention to either escalate the problems or to even consider doing anything about them...the customer is treated with total contempt!

Terrible for another friend of some politician to make money on the nation. It started at £25 and now is £70 for someone who wants to add a rear room or dormer in the loft. Add to this crazy planning process and you have recipe for disaster.

As a business that local councils require members of the public to use, I do not think that the Planning Portal should accept advertisers without vetting them. In the case of Studio Charrette they would see on Google and Trustpilot that they regularly fail to provide the services that they accept payment for and fail to make promised refunds.

This is a common problem in the UK with services that you have to pay a fee for to a public body. These clever Harries work by sticking themselves into the process of doing a planning application. How it works is you upload your pdf drawings to them, and their platform charges you a £60+ fee for sending it to the planning office as you could have done yourself in an email, quicker and better and with no terms and conditions (such as signing away your rights if they e.g. spread viruses to your computer through incompetence). You get this now in every walk of life whether it is a deed poll, or a land registry check. And various parts of our central and local government are well and truly in on this. Kick them to the kerb and insist that your Council takes a direct application with ONLY the statutory fee they're allowed to in law. The money you'll save isn't even the point it's about not having absolute carpetbaggers taking over everything.

The Planning Portal used to be very useful as it cut out some of the work required when submitting a planning application at a reasonable fee. That fee has increased overtime to £64.00, which in my view is excessive. I now do that extra work myself and charge my clients an extra £50.00. Also getting refunds is difficult as you have to prove the payments even when you have receipts. They will doubtless be phased out if the prices continue to rise.

The Planning Portal was throwing up technical errors whilst I was trying to submit a Listed Building Consent (LBC). The help line insisted the problem was at my end and made me jump through hoops to no avail. Frustrated, I gave up, but a few days later I visited the portal where the technical errors had vanished. I am not pleased they threw the problem back at me.

Even worse the agent told me that for a LBC I had to go to their Building Control portal, which turned out to be WRONG so I needlessly submitted an application which I then had to withdraw once the error was discovered.

However they were polite.