A £100 increase in the fee for appealing against a planning decision has been branded ’stealth taxation’ by an MHK.

The accusation came from Chris Robertshaw (Douglas East) in the House of Keys last week, after Planning Minister Geoffrey Boot confirmed the fee to lodge an appeal was going up from £175 to £276 in April, following on the heels of a decision to make permission to appeal harder to obtain.

Mr Boot argued the fees still came nowhere near covering the cost of holding a planning appeal.

Mr Robertshaw said the public had been ’exhausted’ by stealth taxation under the previous administration and the current government said it would stop. But the latest forecast saw departmental fees and charges were going up by £5 million in the year 2021 alone.

’Is the minister not very embarrassed that he is reintroducing stealth taxation?’ Mr Robertshaw asked, while calling upon Mr Boot to apologise for ’the embarrassment caused in this unannounced change to policy’.

But the minister said the government was being ’fiscally responsible’.

Mr Boot added: ’I do not see planning appeal fees as a form of taxation and in fact the shortfall is somewhere around £750 to £800 per appeal heard - and it may be more than that in substantial cases.

’So it is not a form of taxation. This is a matter of cost recovery and it is nowhere near the actual cost.’

The £276 fee applies equally to a planning applicant appealing against a refusal or the imposition of conditions, or a third party appeal.

But Mr Boot said that figures showed only 1 in 16 third party appeals in 2018 was successful, which suggested that many were not based on ’legitimate planning matters’.

However, when an appeal was successful, the fee was returned to the appellant.

The issue was raised initially by Rob Callister (Onchan), who stressed the importance of fairness. But Mr Boot argued: ’Fairness works both ways.’

Applicants could end up incurring costs of thousands of pounds in responding to a planning appeal, he said.

However Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey) raised concern the higher fees could deter people with legitimate concerns from lodging an appeal.

The announcement on fees comes after Mr Boot’s department imposed greater restriction on those who could claim ’interested party’ status on a planning application, which gave them the right to lodge an appeal.

Mr Boot said people could still object at the initial stage.

He told MHKs: ’The time to make representations is prior to the planning application being determined and everyone is able to do that.’