Appellants seeking appeal inquiries will now be required to notify the Local Planning Authority (LPA) and the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) at least 10 working days before their appeals are submitted.
PINS has published a ‘notification of intention to submit an appeal’ form that appellants are required to complete when they are requesting an appeal be dealt with by the inquiry procedure. LPA’s have been told to advise applicants of the new requirement when issuing decisions.
This new procedure follows the economist Bridget Rosewell’s review of planning appeal inquiries. Rosewell advised that by making this change timetables for inquiries “could be slashed from an average of 47 weeks to around 26 weeks”.
Appellants currently request their preferred procedure when submitting their appeal, before PINS decide on what route they will be allocated (Written, Hearing or Inquiry).
“To help frontload and streamline this process, there would be merit in requiring the appellant, where they propose to request an inquiry, to notify the local planning authority of their intention to appeal a minimum of 10 working days before they submit their appeal, copying in the Planning Inspectorate,” Rosewell said.
PINS have adopted some of Rosewell’s recommendations in the weeks since her review was published. PINS also said that guidance on new arrangements for the statement of case and statement of common ground, will be published in due course.
For further information on Appeals visit our Planning Appeals page.
17 June 2019