Professionals and Qualifications – Page 4

EIA competent experts and who coordinates the statement

Regulation 18 puts the duty on the applicant: competent experts, with their expertise set out. Competence has to be demonstrated on the face of the submission.

Transport planners: database access and signed outputs

Trip rate disputes are rarely about arithmetic. They are about which surveyed sites were selected and whether the officer can rerun the query. That is why database access matters.

Archaeological contractors and the county archaeologist

Your contractor writes the written scheme of investigation; the council's archaeological adviser approves it. Keeping those two roles apart is what keeps archaeology off the critical path.

RTPI chartered status: what it means for your agent

Planning is not a protected profession, so anyone may act as your agent. Chartered status brings a code of conduct, insurance and accountability, and matters most where the case turns on policy.

Fire engineering competence under the Building Safety Act

A fire statement is read by a technical consultee who knows what a competent author would have covered. How to check fire engineering competence, scope the appointment and record the decision.

Acoustic consultants: membership, methods and competence

Nobody regulates the title acoustician, so the weight a council gives your noise report depends on demonstrable competence. What to check before you appoint, and how to read a draft for weak points.

Briefing an ecologist: the scope of works to send

Three ecologists will only quote on the same basis if you tell them the same things. Here is the page and a half that gets you comparable prices and a usable programme.

Conflicts of interest when reviewing a planning report

The test is not whether you feel impartial but whether a reasonable person would doubt it. Here are the six patterns that catch reviewers, and the four-line declaration that fixes most of them.

Peer review against professional review: the difference

Peer review improves a report; professional review changes who stands behind it. What each one checks, what the declaration commits the reviewer to, and how councils treat them at validation.

What a reviewer's sign-off declaration commits them to

A sign-off declaration says who you are, what you examined and what you are not asserting. The fields that make it defensible, and when to decline the review altogether.

Reliance letters and who can rely on a survey report

Reading a technical report in a data room creates no rights against its author. How reliance letters, assignment and collateral warranties differ, and what to agree at appointment.

Checking a consultant's professional indemnity cover

The policy that answers a claim is the one in force when the claim is made, not when the report was written. How to check limits, run-off cover and exclusions before appointing.

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Why every planning report needs a named author and date

A technical report without a named author and a survey date carries less weight, and for licensed report types it is not evidence at all. What to check before submission.

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When the council's expert disagrees with your consultant

When a council consultee rejects your acoustician's or ecologist's conclusions, the first job is working out whether the disagreement is about method or about judgement. Only one of them can be solved with more analysis.

13 October 2026Read article →

Redress when a consultant's report fails at validation

When a report you paid for is rejected by the validation team, the first question is whether the document or the brief was wrong. The answer decides which route to redress is open to you.

Supervision chains: graduate work signed by a chartered author

A signature says the signatory can defend the method under cross-examination. How to evidence real supervision, what to record about fieldwork, and where competence cannot be delegated.

Changing consultant mid-application without losing evidence

Swapping planning consultant mid-application turns on copyright, reliance letters and who holds the survey files. The handover list, the notification to the case officer and the clauses that prevent it.

Who can prepare a health impact assessment

There is no licence for health impact assessment. What matters is whether the author can handle public health evidence and answer the policy that triggered it.

Who can certify a drainage design for adoption

Nobody holds a statutory licence to certify a drainage design. What matters is the undertaker's design check, the designer's indemnity and the as-built record.

Who is competent to design a commercial kitchen extract system

An installer who has fitted a hundred canopies is not the same as a designer. Here is what the planning submission needs and who has to stand behind it.

Who records a building to Historic England levels 1 to 4

The recording level decides who can produce the record. Levels 1 and 2 describe a building; level 3 explains it, which needs someone who can read phasing and produce measured drawings.

Who verifies remediation once contaminated land work is done

Verification closes the loop on the conceptual site model. The evidence has to be gathered during the works, which is why appointing the verifier late is the main programme risk.

Who prepares a viability assessment and who reviews it

A planning viability assessment is an opinion with an audit trail, not a case. Who should write it, which inputs a council reviewer checks first, and how to keep the process short.

Checking a surveyor's competence for a structural report

Protected engineering titles are verifiable on a public register, and the limitations section tells you more about a structural report than the conclusion does.