Professionals and Qualifications
Who is competent to prepare or sign off each report, and how to brief and check them.
Latest in Professionals and Qualifications
372 articlesWho signs a Design and Access Statement
There is no signature block and no prescribed author for a Design and Access Statement. Article 9 of the DMPO 2015 says when one is needed and what it must explain.
Checking a consultant's membership and currency
Letters after a name tell you somebody passed an assessment once. Currency, indemnity cover and the right institute are what protect you.
Odour assessment competence and who can sign one
An odour risk assessment needs dispersion judgement as well as ductwork knowledge. The two skills rarely sit in the same person, and almost never in the supplier.
Transport evidence: who signs a trip generation note
A trip generation note is only as good as the judgement behind the site selection. Here is the competence highway authorities look for and what to put in the brief.
Whole life carbon assessment competence and scope
The RICS whole life carbon standard fixes the modules, the 60 year study period, the data rules and the reporting format. Most differences between assessments come from scope choices, not arithmetic.
Overheating assessments and CIBSE TM59 competence
Nobody is licensed to run a CIBSE TM59 overheating assessment, so competence is judged on the inputs. The weather file, assumptions schedule and per-room results are the places to look.
What MRTPI tells you about a planning agent
Chartered membership of the Royal Town Planning Institute signals assessed competence and a binding code of conduct. It is not a financial remedy, and planning consultancy has no protected title at all.
Who may write a BS 5837 tree survey
BS 5837:2012 asks for an arboriculturist defined by education, training and experience rather than by licence. Councils look for a relevant qualification, an assessed professional grade and planning experience.
Who may sign a SuDS maintenance and management plan
There is no competent person regime for sustainable drainage maintenance plans. The question an authority is really asking is who holds the duty in twenty years, how it is funded and how plant reaches each component.
Townscape assessor competence and peer review
Townscape judgements are opinions, so competence shows in whether the reasoning is traceable. This covers the disciplines that do this work, baseline discipline, design review weight and what a peer review should test.
Who prepares an open space assessment
Open space work is survey and data handling measured against the authority's own standards. This covers who should lead by typology, how catchments should be drawn, and the delivery questions the assessment must answer.
Who prepares a foul sewage assessment
A foul sewage assessment is judged on three pieces of evidence rather than on the author's title. This sets out who obtains each one, and when a drainage engineer becomes necessary.
Who prepares a circular economy statement
A circular economy statement stands or falls on quantified material data. This looks at which member of the design team should lead it, where the tonnages come from, and who carries the post-completion reporting duty.
Who prepares a social infrastructure assessment
A social infrastructure assessment is written by a planning consultant from data held by education authorities, integrated care boards and council service departments. Testing those figures is most of the work.
Who prepares a statement of community involvement
An applicant's statement of community involvement is written by whoever designed the consultation. It has to show what changed as a result, which is the part most statements miss.
Who prepares a utilities assessment
A utilities assessment is written by an engineer but built from capacity responses only the network operators can give. Running those enquiries late is what wrecks programmes.
Who prepares a waste management strategy
A waste strategy is a calculation and a drawing, not a narrative. The architect usually owns it, the transport consultant checks the access, and the council's waste team decides whether it works.
Ecologist competence for a preliminary ecological appraisal
A preliminary ecological appraisal is a scoping exercise. Its value lies in the limitations it states honestly and the survey seasons it puts into your programme.
Odour assessor competence and the assessment benchmarks
Odour assessment has no statutory register, so you are judging method rather than credentials. Emission rate provenance and receptor characterisation are where most reports fail.
Who prepares a viability assessment and to what standard
A viability assessment is prepared under a mandatory professional standard that requires objectivity, declared conflicts and transparent inputs. It is not an advocacy document.
Energy assessor competence for an energy statement
An accredited energy assessor produces the modelling for an energy statement. Reading the local policy and staging the hierarchy is a separate skill, and the gap between the two is where statements fail.
Who carries out a TM59 overheating assessment
TM59 overheating assessments are not reserved to any registered profession. What separates a usable report from a decorative one is the weather file, the openable area assumed and which units were tested.
Who may sign a biodiversity gain plan
A biodiversity gain plan is submitted by the developer and approved by the local planning authority. The competence question sits one level down, on the statutory metric and the condition assessment behind it.
What to ask a consultant before you appoint them
Ask who writes the report, what the fee excludes, how many revision rounds are included and what insurance the firm carries. Get all four answers in writing.
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