Using environmental information requests in planning

Most of what a council holds about a planning application is environmental information, which means requests for it are handled under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 rather than the freedom of information regime. That matters because the environmental information regulations give planning objectors a stronger position: there are no absolute exemptions apart from the treatment of personal data, every exception carries a public interest test, and the Regulations start from a presumption in favour of disclosure.

Knowing which regime applies changes how you word a request and how you challenge a refusal. A council that refuses under the wrong regime has already made a mistake you can use.

Why the environmental rules cover planning

The Regulations implement the Aarhus Convention through European derived law retained in the United Kingdom, and they define environmental information broadly. It includes the state of elements of the environment such as air, water, soil, land and landscape, and it includes measures and activities affecting or likely to affect those elements, along with the cost benefit and economic analyses used within such measures.

Development plans, planning applications, officer reports, consultation responses, highway assessments, flood modelling, contamination reports and ecology surveys all fall within that definition. So do internal emails about a proposal, because they relate to a measure affecting land.

The practical consequence is that a request need not be in writing to be valid, no fee is normally payable for access, and the council must provide advice and assistance to help you frame your request.

Wording a request that works

Vague requests get vague answers. Specific requests get documents.

1. Name the application by reference number and site address, or define the subject precisely.
2. Give a date range. From the date of the pre-application enquiry to the date of the decision is usually right.
3. Name the material you want: correspondence between named officers and the applicant or agent, internal emails, consultee responses, minutes and notes of meetings, the viability appraisal and any review of it, and any drafts of the officer report.
4. Ask for a schedule of any documents withheld, with the exception relied on for each, so you can test the refusal.
5. State that you are requesting under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, and in the alternative under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 if any material falls outside the environmental definition.

Send it to the council's information governance team rather than to the case officer. And keep it proportionate. A request that would take weeks to answer invites a manifestly unreasonable refusal, and narrowing it later costs time you may not have.

The twenty working day period

The council must respond as soon as possible and no later than 20 working days after receipt. Where the request is complex and voluminous, it may extend the period to 40 working days, but it must tell you it is doing so within the original 20.

That timetable rarely fits a live application. Consultation periods run for 21 days, and committee dates are fixed weeks in advance, so a request made when the application is publicised may not be answered before the decision is taken.

Two responses to that. Ask early, ideally as soon as the application appears on the register, and say in the request why the timing matters. And ask the council to defer determination if the material is relevant to representations you want to make. It does not have to agree, but a refusal to consider the point is itself worth recording.

The exceptions councils use most

Every exception is subject to the public interest test, and the Regulations require a public authority to apply a presumption in favour of disclosure.

The ones that appear most often in planning are:

• Material in the course of completion, unfinished documents and incomplete data. Councils apply this to draft officer reports. It weakens once the report is published.
• Internal communications. This covers emails between officers, but the public interest in understanding how a recommendation was reached is often strong.
• Confidentiality of commercial or industrial information where confidentiality is provided by law to protect a legitimate economic interest. This is the one used for viability material.
• Adverse effect on the course of justice, used where enforcement action or litigation is contemplated.
• Personal data of third parties, handled under the data protection route rather than as a straightforward exception.

Two things councils get wrong. They cite an exception without doing the public interest balance, and they apply an exception to a whole document rather than redacting the sensitive part. Both are grounds for challenge.

Commercial confidentiality and viability

Viability material attracts the most argument, and the policy position helps requesters.

Planning Practice Guidance expects viability assessments submitted with applications to be prepared on the basis that they will be made publicly available, with only limited exceptions, and to be presented in an accessible standard format. An authority that accepts a confidential appraisal and then refuses to disclose it is in tension with that expectation.

Where a genuine commercial interest exists, the proportionate outcome is redaction of specific figures with disclosure of the methodology and the conclusions. Ask for that explicitly as an alternative to full disclosure, because it is harder to refuse than an all or nothing request.

Note that confidentiality claimed by an applicant does not bind the council. The test is whether confidentiality is provided by law to protect a legitimate economic interest, not whether the applicant asked for it.

Internal review and the Information Commissioner

If you are refused, or if the council does not respond in time, ask for an internal review within 40 working days of the response. Set out why the exception does not apply and why the public interest favours disclosure, and address the council's reasoning point by point rather than restating the original request.

The council must complete the review as soon as possible and no later than 40 working days from receipt.

After that, complain to the Information Commissioner, who can issue a decision notice requiring disclosure. A decision notice can be appealed by either party to the First-tier Tribunal in the Information Rights jurisdiction.

The timescales are long. An information request is a tool for scrutiny and for building a case over months, not for stopping a decision next week.

Using what you receive

Read the consultee responses first. A highway authority or lead local flood authority objection that was resolved by a late amendment often explains more about a scheme than the officer report does.

Then compare the officer report with the underlying material. Where a consultation response raised an issue the report does not mention, or where a survey finding was summarised in a way the survey does not support, you have identified a specific factual problem rather than a disagreement about planning judgement. That is the kind of point that carries weight with members at committee, and it is the kind that can support a complaint about how the decision was handled.

It also helps to understand what the applicant was obliged to submit in the first place, which the guide to the documents a planning application requires sets out, and to follow changes to the underlying rules through the planning law updates timeline.

Send the request the week the application is validated, keep it narrow, and ask for the withheld document schedule. Those three habits produce more usable material than any amount of argument afterwards. If you are preparing your own scheme rather than commenting on someone else's, you can enter a postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Information rights are technical and time limits apply, so check the position with 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.