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WRITTEN REPRESENTATIONS

Written Representation Appeals are conducted in accordance with the Town & Country Planning (Appeals)(Written Representations Procedure)(England) Regulations 2000.

On receiving your Appeal, the Council must notify all those who were originally consulted on your Planning Application, or who made representations to the Council about your Planning Application, that an Appeal has been made.

This letter will provide the background details including the Appeal reference number and the starting date for the Appeal and making it clear that their original representations and consultation responses will be forwarded to the Planning Inspectorate. The letter would also indicate that any further comments should be sent direct to the Planning Inspectorate within 28 days of the starting date.

Within 14 days of the starting date, the Council is required to complete a questionnaire containing all the relevant papers and appropriate responses to the questions in the questionnaire. This is submitted to the Inspector and the Appellant. At this stage the questionnaire will also indicate whether the Council wish to prepare any further statement to explain the reasons for their decision.

Within a further 14 days, ie 28 days from the starting date, the Council are required to send any further statement of case to both the Inspector and the Appellant.

 Note: Notification of the starting date should not be taken as indication that an Appeal is valid. Although the Inspectorate will require the procedure to begin, they will be checking to determine whether the Appeal is valid and whether the Council has any doubts about the validity of the Appeal.

 Where the Authority chooses not to submit a further statement, the questionnaire and accompanying documents will be required to confirm this so that the Appellant may reply to the questionnaire without awaiting a further statement.

The Appellant is required to make any response to the questionnaire or to the further statement within 17 days of the date that appears on either of those documents. A copy of the Appellant’s response must be sent to the Local Planning Authority at the same time as it is sent to the Inspectorate.

If the Council confirm on the questionnaire response that they intend to submit a further statement, you should await the arrival of this document, but clearly you will have most of the information necessary to begin preparing your response.

You may consider that the Council’s further comments document requires no additional statement from you - given that you will have already put your case in full on the original Appeal forms. If you have no further comments to make then you should notify the Inspectorate as soon as possible.

Where you have submitted a response to the Council’s further statement which raises additional or new matters, the Council have a further 7 days within which to submit their own further representations. The Inspectorate tends to discourage unnecessary or repetitious cross-correspondence and there is no need to reinforce points that you have already made.

Any third parties may submit representations about the Appeal, but these should be submitted not later than 28 days after the starting date. Both the Council and the Appellant are allowed at least 7 days in which to reply to any third party submissions.

The Inspectorate normally wishes to keep as closely to this timetable as possible, although there may be circumstances in which either party seeks an extension of time. This should be requested through the Case Officer at the Inspectorate, but will require good reasons on which to justify a delay.

The Secretary of State does have the power to disregard representations that have been received outside the prescribed time limits and to proceed to a decision, if it appears that he has sufficient material to be able to reach a decision. In this event, the principal parties will be notified in writing beforehand.

FORMAT OF WRITTEN STATEMENT

Your Written Statement should contain the following information:-

  1. The facing page to your Written Statement should contain the Local Planning Authority planning application reference number and the discreet Appeal number which the Planning Inspectorate has provided. [This will look something like this:- T/APP/P1234/A/99/123456/P1]
  2. A brief description of the proposal.
  3. Details of the Appeal site and its location together with a plan showing the location of the Appeal site outlined in red.
  4. Where possible, you should provide a list of all the relevant Development Plan Policies upon which you rely, together with any other Government Planning Policy Guidance notes or circulars that you consider support your case.
  5. You should set out as concisely as possible your arguments in support of the Appeal. This should elaborate on your grounds of appeal with any additional statements to clarify or augment your argument. You may also comment on the Council's statement and indicate why you disagree with their position.
  6. You may wish to comment on individual third party representations where they raise issues that are incorrect or inappropriate. Although some third party representations may seem entirely inappropriate, third parties are entitled to their views and you should generally endeavour to answer their points in a concise and rational manner without entering into any personal comment.
  7. Finally, you may wish to summarise your case briefly, but avoid merely rehearsing the same points that you have already made in your grounds of appeal and elsewhere in the statement.

SITE VISITS

Following the receipt of all representations, the Inspectorate will arrange a site visit. This inspection is only required in order for either the Local Authority or the Appellant to be able to point out important site features and verify details that have been referred to in the submissions.

NO DISCUSSION OF THE MERITS OF AN APPEAL IS ALLOWED AT A SITE VISIT.

In certain circumstances it may be unnecessary for the Planning Inspector to be accompanied by either party, if the site can be seen from a public highway or other publicly accessible land. Unaccompanied site visits will not require formal arrangements to be made with the Council or the Appellant.

In the interests of maintaining impartiality, the Inspector will not permit a site visit to take place accompanied by only one party to the Appeal. If for any reason you are unable to attend a pre-arranged site visit you should notify the Inspectorate immediately.

 FINALLY

Once the site visit is concluded the Inspector will prepare his decision and a formal letter will be sent to the appellant and the Council subsequently.

The Inspectorate is always endeavouring to speed up the process and a decision may be forthcoming very soon after the site visit. This does not mean that the Inspector has made a snap decision. Remember he will have had your appeal documents for some time and is charged with ensuring he has all necessary information before deciding on the case.

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