When a council asks for the report author's CV

Some local validation lists ask for evidence that the person who wrote a technical report was competent to write it. If your council requires the author's CV, it can do so only where that requirement appears on a published local list, and only where the information is reasonable and relates to the development. You can satisfy it with a one-page competence statement rather than a full curriculum vitae, and in most cases you should, because everything you submit goes on the public planning register.

The power comes from section 62(3) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which lets a local planning authority require particulars in addition to the national requirements. Article 11 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 sets the limits: the requirement must be set out in a local list published within the two years before the application is made, and it must be reasonable having regard to the nature and scale of the proposed development.

That two-year rule is the first thing to check when a validation officer asks for something unexpected. A local list last refreshed four years ago cannot be enforced.

Why authorities ask at all

Three reasons, and they are not all about suspicion.

The honest one is that competence is written into the standards the reports are supposed to follow. A tree survey to BS 5837:2012 assumes an arboriculturist. A contaminated land assessment to BS 10175 is expected from suitably qualified and experienced persons. Ecological work follows CIEEM guidance, archaeology follows the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists standards, and for Environmental Impact Assessment the 2017 Regulations require the environmental statement to be prepared by competent experts and accompanied by a statement of the expertise relied on. An officer asking who wrote a report is checking the standard has been applied, not insulting you.

The second reason is that officers cannot verify technical content themselves. A development management officer reading a noise report to BS 4142 is reading a document outside their training. Author competence is a proxy for reliability.

The third is defensiveness. Authorities that have been burned by a poor report, or embarrassed at appeal, tighten validation to keep the problem out rather than deal with it at determination.

Where the requirement appears on validation lists

Look for it under the individual report headings rather than in a general section, alongside the related requirement that a report carries a named author and a date. Typical wording asks that reports are "prepared by a suitably qualified person" with "details of qualifications and relevant experience", or that the report "identifies the author, their qualifications and professional membership".

Ecology, arboriculture, contamination, acoustics, structural and heritage reports attract the requirement most often. Planning Statements and Design and Access Statements almost never do, because no professional standard governs them. You can see the range of reports a scheme might need across the 66 report types by category, and the ones with a professional standard behind them are the ones where this question arises.

Where the list says "suitably qualified" without defining it, the authority has given itself room and given you room too. A chartered member of the relevant institute is unarguable. A graduate member with five years of relevant project experience, countersigned by a chartered colleague, is usually accepted.

What to include and what to leave out

A competence statement for a planning submission needs very little:

• The author's name and job title.
• Post-nominals and professional membership, with the institute named and the grade of membership stated.
• Relevant degrees and professional qualifications, with the awarding body.
• Years of relevant practice and the number of comparable assessments undertaken.
• Any licence or registration the work requires, such as a Natural England protected species licence number for an ecologist.
• A single sentence confirming the author worked within the scope of the relevant standard.

What to leave out matters more. No home address. No date of birth. No personal mobile number or personal email. No National Insurance number, no passport or driving licence details, no photograph, no employment history for its own sake, no referees.

Use the practice's address and the practice's switchboard. Where the author is a sole practitioner working from home, use a correspondence address or the registered office rather than the house.

Privacy and personal data

Every document submitted with a planning application is published on the authority's online register and stays there. The register is a statutory public document, and authorities redact inconsistently.

Processing the author's personal data for this purpose is lawful, but the amount should be the minimum needed, which is the data minimisation principle under the UK General Data Protection Regime as given effect by the Data Protection Act 2018. A full employment CV goes well beyond what a validation officer needs to confirm competence. Submitting one is an unnecessary disclosure by you rather than a breach by the council.

Tell your staff this before they email a CV to an agent. Junior technical staff asked for "your CV" will send the one they use for job applications, complete with a home address.

Graduate authors and supervision

Most technical consultancies run work through graduates under supervision, and councils accept it when the chain is visible.

State who did the fieldwork, who did the analysis, who reviewed the report and who takes responsibility for its conclusions. Put the reviewer's name and chartered status on the title page alongside the author's. The structure of a proper supervision chain where graduate work is signed by a chartered author is what satisfies an officer, not a longer list of the graduate's qualifications.

Where a licence is required, the licence holder has to be the named person. Supervision does not transfer a protected species licence or a competent person obligation. For Biodiversity Net Gain under the Environment Act 2021, for protected species work under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and for a Fire Statement at Planning Gateway One under the Building Safety Act 2022, the person with the licence or the fire-engineering competence must be the author, and an AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute for them.

Refusals and holds based on competence

Validation refusal is the usual outcome rather than refusal of permission. The application is held as invalid, you supply the statement, and the clock starts when the authority is satisfied. Annoying rather than fatal.

A harder case is an officer who accepts validation and then gives the report no weight because the author is not qualified. That shows up in the officer's report as a statement that the assessment cannot be relied on, and it is much more damaging because you discover it at week seven. If you suspect the officer doubts the author, raise it early and offer a review by a chartered colleague.

Where the authority goes further and refuses on competence grounds, the appeal route is a section 78 appeal, and the Inspector will consider the evidence on its merits. Inspectors are generally more interested in whether the method was right than in the letters after the author's name, but they notice when a report that should have followed a British Standard did not.

Preparing a standard statement

Write one per author, keep it to a single page, store it with your quality system and review it annually. Build it so it can be appended to any report without editing.

Then do the boring part: check the local list for every authority you work in, note which report types attract the requirement, and add a line to your submission checklist. Most practices discover the requirement at validation on a Friday afternoon, which is the worst time to be chasing a colleague's professional membership number.

If you need a reviewer with the right competence for a specialist report, the professional directory is the route to a review and sign-off. The draft can be prepared quickly. The competence attached to it cannot.

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