Checking competence before you instruct a consultant

Before you pay a consultant anything, spend twenty minutes verifying three things: that the person is on the register they say they are on, that they hold professional indemnity insurance, and that they have done this exact type of report for this exact type of authority. Checking consultant competence is not rude and nobody competent minds. The ones who bristle are the ones worth walking away from.

Registers you can search yourself

Every planning discipline has a professional body, and most publish a searchable member list. The names on those lists are the starting point rather than the finish, but an absence is informative.

For ecology, the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management holds the membership grades that councils recognise, and protected species work also requires the right licence from Natural England. For planning itself, the Royal Town Planning Institute holds chartered membership. Surveyors appear through the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Arboriculturists appear through the Arboricultural Association, which also runs a registered consultant scheme with an assessment behind it. Archaeological contractors appear as registered organisations through their own institute.

Search the register yourself rather than accepting a logo on a letterhead. Logos are copied. Registers are not.

What membership grades actually mean

A grade is a statement about assessed competence, and the grades are not interchangeable.

Student and graduate grades mean the person is training. Full or chartered grades mean their competence has been assessed by peers against a published standard. Fellowship usually means long service and contribution rather than a higher technical bar.

So a report signed by someone at a training grade is not automatically wrong, and in a large practice it is normal for junior staff to draft under supervision. What matters is who signs it and whether that person is at a grade the council will accept. Ask directly: who signs the report, what is their grade, and will they attend a site meeting if the case officer asks.

Some report types have a harder rule than membership. Protected species surveys and mitigation licences need a suitably licensed ecologist. Biodiversity net gain assessments are expected from a competent person under the Environment Act 2021 regime. An Environmental Statement must be prepared by competent experts under the EIA Regulations 2017. In those cases competence is a legal requirement rather than a preference, and PlanScope's drafts are a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute.

Asking for a redacted sample report

This is the check that tells you most and the one people are shyest about making.

Ask for a recent report of the same type, with the client name and address redacted. A consultant with nothing to hide will send one. Then read it for four things.

1. Does it cite the adopted local plan policies of a real authority, by number, rather than only national policy.
2. Does it reach a conclusion, or does it describe the site at length and then hedge.
3. Are the survey dates, methods and limitations stated plainly, including anything that could not be surveyed.
4. Is there a named author with a stated grade on the front.

A report that fails point two will fail you at committee. Officers do not have time to construct your argument for you, and a document that stops short of a recommendation gives them nothing to lean on.

References and the questions that get useful answers

Two references are enough. Ask for one where the application succeeded and one where it did not, which is a question that sorts people quickly.

Useful questions are specific. Did the report arrive on the date agreed. Did the council come back with questions, and who answered them. Was there an extra fee, and what for. Would you use them again for the same type of work rather than in general.

Avoid asking whether the consultant was good. Everyone says yes.

If the consultant will not give references for work of the same type, take that seriously. A specialist who has written thirty noise assessments can name two clients without thinking about it. One who offers a reference for a different discipline entirely is telling you where their experience really sits.

And check the authority. A consultant who works mainly in one county may never have read the validation checklist of the council you are applying to, and local validation lists differ enough to matter.

Red flags in a fee proposal

A proposal that quotes a single number with no scope attached is the most common problem. The scope is where the money is.

Watch for a fee that excludes the site visit, excludes responding to consultee comments, excludes any revision after submission, or treats attendance at a committee as an extra. Each of those is legitimate as a separate line, but only if you can see it before you sign. Writing a proper brief first, as set out in writing a brief for a specialist planning report, removes most of this at a stroke.

Insurance, terms and the boring paperwork

Professional indemnity insurance is the thing that matters if the report turns out to be wrong. Ask for the certificate, check it is current, and check the limit is sensible against the value of what depends on the report.

Terms are worth ten minutes too. Read them for a liability cap. A cap set at the level of the fee is common and often reasonable on a small commission, but you should know it is there. Check who owns the copyright in the report and whether you can submit it with a planning application, which sounds absurd until someone tries to charge a licence fee for a second use.

Recording the checks you made

Write down what you checked, when, and what the answer was. Three lines in an email to yourself is enough.

This matters for two reasons. If a consultee later questions the author's competence, you can answer the same day rather than going back through your inbox. And if the report does fail, the record of what you verified is what separates a claim against the consultant from an argument about what you should have asked.

The professional directory on PlanScope is the route to a reviewer who can check and sign off an AI-assisted draft, and the same questions apply to a reviewer as to an author. If you are still deciding which documents you need at all, start from the full list of report types and work backwards to the disciplines involved.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required.