Getting planning documents the council has not published

If a document about a planning application is missing from the council's website, the request you want is almost always an environmental information request under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, not a freedom of information request. Most planning information counts as environmental information, and the 2004 Regulations are more generous to the requester: no fee for inspecting, a presumption in favour of disclosure, and no flat cost limit that lets the council refuse because the search would take too long.

Councils will often answer either way. But asking under the right regime changes which exceptions they can rely on, and that is usually what decides whether you get the document.

What is normally on the public register

Article 40 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires every local planning authority to keep a register of applications. In practice that means the application forms, the drawings, the supporting reports, the site notice, the officer's report, the decision notice and the conditions all appear on the public access portal.

Committee papers come under a different rule. The Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 requires agendas, reports and a list of background papers to be available in advance of the meeting, which gives you a route to the documents an officer relied on even where they are not on the planning file.

Two practical habits help before you make any request. Check the portal for the same address rather than the same application number, because earlier applications, certificates and discharge of conditions submissions often contain the plans and surveys you are looking for. And check the appeal file on the Planning Inspectorate's system if the scheme has been refused before, since appeal documents are published there in full.

Documents often withheld and why

The categories that go missing are predictable:

• Viability assessments and their appendices, on commercial confidentiality grounds.
• Legal advice to the council, on legal professional privilege.
• Internal emails and officer notes, as internal communications.
• Consultation responses, redacted or withheld because they contain personal data.
• Protected species survey data, where disclosing a bat roost or badger sett location would harm the species.
• Pre-application correspondence, on the basis that the applicant's interests would be prejudiced.

Some of those withholdings are sound. Protected species locations are a genuine and well established reason to redact, and so are home addresses in objection letters. Others are weaker than they look. Planning Practice Guidance on viability is explicit that assessments should be publicly available, and an authority refusing a viability appendix outright is on difficult ground.

Which request regime applies to planning information

Environmental information is defined in regulation 2 of the 2004 Regulations and covers the state of the environment, factors affecting it, and measures and activities affecting or likely to affect it. A planning application is a measure. So the reports, the correspondence about it, and the council's own assessment of it are environmental information.

If you are unsure, say in your request that you are asking under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and, to the extent any part is not environmental information, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. That single sentence prevents the council choosing the regime that suits it.

Making a request that gets an answer

Precision is what gets documents released, because a vague request invites a refusal as manifestly unreasonable.

1. Address it to the council's information governance team, copying the case officer, and head it with the application reference.
2. Describe documents, not subjects. "The transport assessment appendices A to F" works. "Everything about traffic" does not.
3. Give a date range where you can. Correspondence between two named dates narrows the search enormously.
4. Ask for the format you want, electronic copies or inspection of the originals, since inspection is free of charge.
5. State the regime, as above.
6. Ask for a schedule of documents withheld, with the exception relied on for each. This is the step most people skip and the one that makes a later review straightforward.
7. Ask to be told if any part is held by another body, such as the county highway authority or the Environment Agency, so you can redirect.

Keep the tone neutral. The officer reading it has no discretion to be helpful to a polite requester and no power to refuse a rude one, but a short factual request is easier to answer in full than a long argument with a request buried in it.

Exceptions and the public interest test

Regulation 12 of the 2004 Regulations sets out the exceptions, and regulation 12(2) requires the authority to apply a presumption in favour of disclosure. Every exception, including commercial confidentiality and internal communications, is qualified by a public interest test. There is no absolute exception except for personal data, which is handled under regulation 13 and the data protection legislation.

That structure gives you three arguments when something is withheld. The first is that the exception does not apply on its terms, for example that a document already circulated to the applicant is not an internal communication. The second is that the public interest in disclosure outweighs the interest in withholding, which is strong where the document bears on a decision not yet taken. The third is that the authority has failed to consider partial disclosure, since redaction of the sensitive passages is usually possible and is required rather than optional.

An illustrative example. An objector asks for the viability appraisal underpinning a reduced affordable housing offer. The council withholds it as commercially confidential. On review, the appraisal is released with the developer's internal rate of return assumptions redacted and the residual land value disclosed, because the figure driving the policy departure was the part the public interest attached to. This example is illustrative.

Internal review and the regulator

If the answer is a refusal, a partial release, or silence, ask for an internal review within 40 working days of the response. Put it in writing, identify each document you are pressing for, and set out which limb of your argument applies to each. A review request that simply repeats the original request rarely changes the outcome.

After the review, the complaint goes to the Information Commissioner, who can issue a decision notice requiring disclosure, and from there to the First-tier Tribunal. That route is free but slow, and it will not finish before the application is determined.

Which leads to the practical point. Where the document matters because a decision is imminent, the information request is a parallel track, not a substitute for objecting on the material you already have. If the process itself has gone wrong, complaining about how a council handled an application is a separate route, and in rare cases judicial review as a last resort for objectors may be available on grounds that include a failure to make material available for consultation.

Timescales to expect

Twenty working days is the deadline, and councils that intend to use the extension must tell you within the first twenty days. In practice, straightforward requests for identified documents come back in two to three weeks, and requests covering correspondence over months take the full extension.

Three things speed it up. Asking for documents the authority can find by reference rather than by search. Accepting electronic copies. And naming a narrow date range even if you later widen it.

If the scheme goes to appeal, much of the material you wanted becomes available anyway, because the council has to produce its evidence. Our note on taking part in an appeal as an interested party explains how to use that. And if you are looking at a developer's consultation record rather than the council's file, the Statement of Community Involvement is the document that should set out who was consulted and what was said.

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

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