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Planning Inspectors past performance on Planning Appeal Decisions

Ever been dismayed to see your planning application allocated to a development management officer with reputation for refusing development?  The sad fact of life is that not all officers are the same.  The question is, does the same apply to planning inspectors?

Does it matter which Inspector decides your appeal?

Of course every Inspector tries hard to be professional and fair.  Nevertheless, Inspectors are human too and naturally each has their own personality, perspective and unique experience of life.  Furthermore, the planning system is not a simple matter of applying tick-box assessments and clear rules; subjective judgements are required. Ultimately decision-making is down to the individual. Who the decision maker is does matter.

The Planning Inspectorate's annual statistics for each individual Planning Inspector are reproduced below so you can see the % appeals allowed by your appointed Inspector over 12 months.  Please note this is only a reliable indicator where there are a significant number of appeals. The smaller the number of appeals, the less useful is the data.  For example, if the number of appeals is less than 10 in any one category, the results will reflect the nature of the individual appeals more than the individual inspector.  

Please note PINS’ caveats on use of the data detailed at the bottom of the table. They emphasise that all Inspectors must abide by rules of impartiality and that casework is allocated on the best balance of availability, geography, casework level and expertise.  This may produce apparent patterns of outcome that are in fact artefacts of the way work is allocated and do not provide evidence as to an Inspector’s fitness for or approach to a particular case.  Please bear these important caveats in mind when interpreting the % of appeals approved.

Understanding your planning Inspector

It’s worth looking at previous appeal Decisions made by your nominated Inspector on developments similar to your own case, as it may highlight your Inspector’s thinking processes.  For example, one Inspector may have a particular focus on design issues while another may emphasise landscape impact.  A quick read of 5 – 10 previous decisions by your Inspector will help you understand their perspective better.  It is particularly valuable to look at those appeals they have dismissed, so you can be better prepared to respond to the LPA’s Statement of Case in a manner that it also likely to address your Inspector’s likely concerns. To find appeals by your nominated Inspector, search by Inspector using Appeal Finder’s search.

Appeal Finder also has a table showing the % allowed by local planning authority, by type of appeal, available here.

Table 1. Appeals allowed by individual planning inspectors for 2022/2023

Please note the number of appeals decided by Inspector will be different to the number of documents on Appeal Finder, so the annual totals will be different. For example, Linked appeals have only one Decision Notice document shared by several appeals. Some appeals have Costs Decisions, resulting in an extra document.