Checking a consultant's appeal track record

A consultant appeal track record is public, free to search and more informative than any capability statement. Inspectors write down what they thought of the evidence put in front of them, and they do it in language that is polite, specific and occasionally brutal. Half an hour reading decision letters tells you more about how someone performs under pressure than an hour in their meeting room.

It is due diligence most clients never do, and it costs nothing.

Why the decision letters matter more than the brochure

A capability statement lists appeals won. It does not say how many were run, which arguments carried the decision, or whether the inspector accepted the consultant's evidence or reached the same outcome for a different reason.

Decision letters do. An inspector explains which evidence was found persuasive, which was given limited weight and why, and where a party failed to deal with a point. On a hearing or inquiry the letter also records who appeared and in what capacity, so you can see whether the person you are about to appoint has stood up at an inquiry or has only ever written a statement.

That distinction matters in a way applicants often discover too late.

Searching published appeal decisions

Start with the Planning Inspectorate's published casework, which is searchable by appeal reference, by local planning authority and by date, and lets you pull the decision letter as issued. Most councils also publish decision letters against the original application reference on their own register, which is the easier route when you know the site.

Useful search strategies:

• Search by the council you are dealing with, to see how appeals in that area have gone and which arguments have succeeded there.
• Search by development type to find decisions on comparable schemes.
• Where you know a consultant has acted on a site, find that application on the council register and follow it through to the appeal.

Read decisions in full rather than the summary. The reasoning is where the value sits, and the conclusion paragraph rarely explains why one party's evidence carried more weight than the other's.

Keep in mind that appeal decisions are indicative of how inspectors have approached an issue rather than binding precedent. Quoting them as though they bind a decision maker is itself a sign of inexperience.

Reading what the inspector said about the evidence

Certain phrases recur and each one means something.

"I give limited weight to" a piece of evidence usually means the inspector found it unsupported, out of date, or built on assumptions that were not established. "The appellant provided no evidence that" is worse, because it points to a gap that should have been foreseen. "It was accepted in cross-examination that" signals a witness who conceded a material point under questioning, which sometimes reflects an honest professional and sometimes reflects a position that should never have been advanced.

Conversely, "I found the appellant's analysis of X thorough and it was not effectively challenged" is the sentence you are looking for.

Read the council's side too. An inspector who criticises the authority's evidence while accepting the appellant's tells you something about both.

Where technical evidence is involved, look at whether the inspector engaged with the methodology or simply preferred one witness. Methodological criticism is the strongest signal available about a technical consultant, and it connects to the broader question of what competent person means in planning legislation.

Written representations against inquiry experience

The three appeal procedures place very different demands on a consultant.

Someone with a long record in written representations may have no inquiry experience at all, and inquiry work is a different professional skill. If your scheme is heading for an inquiry, ask directly how many the person has appeared at as a witness, in what topic areas, and when the most recent one was. Then find one of those decisions and read it.

A consultant who has only run written appeals is not a weaker professional. They are a different kind of professional, and appointing them to give evidence at an inquiry against experienced counsel is an unkindness to everyone.

Costs awards and how to read them

Costs at appeal are awarded where a party has behaved unreasonably and that behaviour has caused the other side to incur wasted expense. The guidance distinguishes substantive unreasonableness, such as pursuing an argument with no evidence, from procedural unreasonableness, such as introducing material late.

An award against a party a consultant acted for is worth knowing about. Read it rather than count it, because the reasons matter. An award for late submission of evidence is a process failing. An award for advancing a case with no supporting evidence goes to professional judgement.

Be careful about attribution. Costs are awarded against the party, not the adviser, and a client who insists on running a hopeless argument against advice puts the adviser in an impossible position. Ask about it rather than assuming.

Awards against the local planning authority in cases your candidate ran are, incidentally, a positive signal.

References from the other side

The most informative reference is from someone who was on the opposing side.

Case officers and council planning managers deal with the same consultants repeatedly, and will usually give a straight answer about whether someone is constructive, whether their submissions are complete, and whether officers trust their numbers. They will not give you a formal reference, and a short conversation is not a formal reference.

Opposing consultants are similarly useful and, in a small professional community, generally honest. The question that gets the best answer is not whether the person is good. It is whether they would want them on the other side of a case.

For technical disciplines the same applies within the specialism, where reviewers know whose work stands up. Those relationships are part of what a professional directory is for.

What the record cannot tell you

Selection bias runs through all of it. A consultant who takes difficult cases will have a worse headline win rate than one who takes easy ones, and the difficult cases are often where the skill shows.

The record also cannot tell you what the client instructed. Appeals are lost on site constraints, on policy that was always going to defeat the scheme, and on decisions made before the consultant was appointed. None of that appears in the decision letter.

And it says nothing about the work that never reached appeal: the schemes negotiated to approval at officer level, which is where most value is added and which leaves no public trace at all.

So read the decisions, ask the direct questions, take the references, and then weigh all of it against the scheme in front of you. Where the appointment is for a specific technical report rather than for advocacy, check the underlying methodology question too, as with viability assessment competence under the RICS standards.

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.