Changing consultant mid-application without losing evidence

Changing planning consultant mid application is a contractual problem before it is a planning one. The reports already on the council's file stay there, but your right to keep using them, and the new consultant's willingness to stand behind them, are two different questions with two different answers. Sort out copyright, reliance and the raw data in that order, and tell the case officer once the handover is actually complete rather than when you decide to make it.

Copyright and licence to use existing reports

Copyright in a report belongs to the author under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, not to the person who paid for it. Commissioning does not transfer ownership, and an assignment has to be in writing and signed by the copyright owner. Most consultants never assign.

What you normally have instead is an implied licence to use the document for the purpose it was commissioned for. For a planning report that purpose is the application on that site, which means submitting it, keeping it on the file and relying on it at appeal are all within the licence. Using the same transport chapter on the next site is not.

Two things narrow that licence. An appointment that makes the licence conditional on payment in full leaves you exposed if there is a fee dispute. And a licence tied to a named scheme can be argued not to cover a materially different revised scheme, which matters when a new consultant redesigns the layout and wants to keep the old survey appendices.

So read the appointment before you terminate it. The clause you need is usually in the standard terms rather than the fee letter.

Reliance letters and third party assignment

Copyright lets you use the document. It does not make anyone responsible for it. That is what reliance does, and it is where handovers stall.

An incoming consultant asked to take over a transport case has three options. They can review the existing work and adopt it as their own, which means accepting professional liability for someone else's modelling. They can ask the original author for a reliance letter addressed to you and, where relevant, to a funder or purchaser, confirming that the report may be relied upon subject to stated limits. Or they can decline both and redo the work.

The third option is more common than clients expect, and it is not obstruction. Professional indemnity cover generally responds to the insured's own work, and a consultant who adopts an unseen survey without the field data is taking a risk their insurer may not share. We look at where that liability sits when work passes between firms in our note on sub-consultants and where liability sits.

Where a report was produced by a sub-consultant to your outgoing adviser, your contract is with the adviser and you may have no direct route to the author at all. Ask for the collateral warranty or a novation, and ask early.

Data, models and survey files you should have

The report is the smallest part of what you paid for. The usable asset is the underlying data, and it is routinely not handed over because nobody asked for it in the right format.

The list worth requesting in writing:

1. Raw survey data and field sheets, with dates, weather conditions, surveyor names and equipment used.
2. Calibration certificates for sound level meters, and the measurement files rather than the summary tables.
3. Model input and output files in native format, with the software version, for dispersion, drainage, daylight or traffic modelling.
4. GIS layers and the shapefiles for any site boundary, constraint overlay or habitat parcel, with the coordinate reference system stated.
5. Laboratory certificates and the chain of custody records for contamination sampling.
6. The photographic record with original file metadata intact.
7. Correspondence with statutory consultees, in full, not summarised.

Metadata matters more than it sounds. A bat survey write-up without the dates and weather cannot be checked against the survey season, and an ecologist asked to adopt it will not. The same applies when the original survey work needs repeating because the window has closed, which is why briefing is worth getting right first time, as covered in briefing an ecologist before the survey season.

Ask for files, not PDFs. A PDF of a drainage calculation is evidence that a calculation happened, nothing more.

Telling the case officer and when

The agent of record receives all correspondence, consultation responses and committee notifications, and the council will keep writing to whoever is registered. So the change has to be notified formally rather than mentioned on a call.

Write to the case officer confirming the change of agent, the new address for service and the date from which it takes effect, and ask them to confirm the amendment on the file. Where the application was submitted through the Planning Portal, the agent details also need updating there. If a consultation period or a committee date falls in the gap, the risk is that a request for further information goes to an inbox nobody is reading.

Time the notification for when the new consultant is actually appointed and has the files. A gap of three weeks with no agent on the record is how extension of time requests get missed.

One practical point. The applicant, not the agent, is the party to the application, so a change of agent does not restart anything or prejudice the determination period.

Fee disputes that block a handover

An unpaid invoice is the usual reason a handover grinds to a halt. The outgoing consultant may withhold deliverables, refuse a reliance letter, or point to a clause making the copyright licence conditional on payment.

Pay the undisputed part immediately and in writing, identifying exactly what remains in dispute and why. That removes the strongest argument for withholding and narrows the fight. Where the sum is properly contested, the dispute resolution route in the appointment, usually mediation or an institute's complaints procedure, is quicker than litigation and does not stop the planning application.

What you should not do is submit the disputed report yourself and hope. A consultant whose name is on a document they have asked you not to use can complain to their institute, and the Royal Town Planning Institute's code of professional conduct and the equivalent codes for other disciplines take authorship seriously. The question of who properly signs a document is the same one that arises with AI-drafted work, which we cover in signing off an AI drafted report as the named author.

Rebuilding the audit trail for appeal

At appeal the Planning Inspectorate works from the documents that were before the council, so the evidence base does not change when your adviser does. What changes is who can speak to it.

A new consultant can present a proof of evidence that interprets another author's survey only if they are prepared to be cross-examined on it, and at an inquiry that means understanding the method, not just the conclusion. Where the original author will not engage, the realistic choices are to commission fresh work in time for the appeal timetable, or to narrow the appeal case so the disputed evidence is not load-bearing.

Keep a handover note recording what was received, what was not, and what the new consultant has verified independently. If the inspector asks why a figure changed between the application and the appeal, that note is the answer. The question of who is competent to author which report is worth settling at the same time, and our guide to who can prepare a Transport Assessment sets out the usual expectations.

Avoiding the problem in the appointment terms

Four clauses prevent almost all of this, and they cost nothing to insert at appointment.

A copyright licence that is irrevocable, royalty-free and not conditional on payment, covering the site rather than a named scheme. A reliance clause permitting reliance by you, your funder, a purchaser and any successor consultant, with the limits stated up front. A deliverables schedule naming the raw data, model files and formats to be handed over at each stage and on termination. And a handover clause requiring cooperation with a successor for a defined period, whatever the reason for termination.

Agree them before the first invoice. Afterwards you are negotiating from a weaker position, and the files you need are already on someone else's server. If you want reviewers who will take on sign-off of work they did not originate, the professional directory is the route to a review request.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.