Your LPA's performance on planning appeals

How good is your local planning authority (LPA) at winning appeals? See its past performance in a handy table here for both last year and the year before.

But wait.

Does last year’s figure make you feel better or worse? Is it important, or ignorable?

How should you react to the figures? There’s 2 sides to this coin: how you think objectively and how you think subjectively:

Objective considerations:

1. Use common sense when interpreting the figures, for example a large number of appeals decided provides more reliable statistics on the % allowed than a few appeals decided.
2. If a LPA has an unusually large number of appeals, why is that? It’s not unexpected for a small LPA like Carlisle to have fewer appeals than a larger LPA like Birmingham, for example. But a small LPA with a large number of appeals should be a red flag.
3. Is the latest year’s performance unusual for some reason? Compare last year’s results (first table with the green columns) with the previous year’s result (second table with orange headers).
4. The huge caveat to remember with all figures is last year’s performance may be very different to this year’s performance, if the LPA has had changes in officers, policy or approach.  

Subjective considerations:

1. Each appeal is unique so while the overall % of appeals allowed is interesting, it simply doesn’t tell you how your case will go. You knew that already. So what is your real reason for peaking at the figures?
2. Is the glass half full or half empty? The figures are probably less important than how you choose to interpret them. For example, if a LPA had 30% of appeals against it allowed by the Planning Inspectorate last year, an optimist says it’s a higher rate than the English average of 28%, so an appeal is more likely to be successful than the national average, while a pessimist despairs the odds are stacked against them with a 70% chance of their appeal being dismissed.  Choose your mindset.
3. Why have you chosen that mindset? Are you seeking confirmation of unconscious fears or hopes? Or seeking evidence to persuade a client either to appeal or not to appeal?

Positive Thinking

Personally I think we should take the “glass half full” approach and only use the figures to positive effect. Keep on smiling. Whether the figures bolster your confidence or undermine it, bear in mind these quotes:

"To be haunted by past failures or satisfied with past successes is to arrest forward motion." Conrad Hilton

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill

Churchill statue opposite the Houses of Parliament
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For future reference, the link to both LPA performance and individual Inspector’s performance is found on our FAQs page under ‘Website Navigation FAQs’ nos 4 & 5.