Peer review and sign-off: what a reviewer takes on

Peer review and sign-off of a planning report is the point at which someone else's work becomes your professional opinion. A reviewer who adds their name, their post-nominals and their signature to a document is telling the local planning authority that the document can be relied on. That is a different act from reading a draft and sending comments, and the fee, the scope letter and the insurance position all need to reflect which of the two you are doing.

Most disputes about review work start with a scope that was never written down.

What sign-off means in professional terms

Signing a report creates obligations in three directions. To your client, through the contract. To the local planning authority and any third party who foreseeably relies on the document, potentially in tort. And to your professional institute, through its code of conduct.

Every institute code contains a version of the same rule: act only within your competence. The RTPI, RICS, CIEEM and the other bodies word it differently and mean the same thing. A transport planner asked to sign off the ecology chapter because it is short is outside competence, however straightforward the chapter looks.

Check your professional indemnity policy before you accept review work rather than after. Policies differ on whether checking or certifying the work of others falls inside the insured activities, and some exclude certification entirely. If the answer is unclear, ask your broker in writing and keep the reply with the engagement letter.

Reviewing a draft against authoring a report

The two sit at different points on a spectrum and the middle is where liability confusion lives.

A review checks a document against a stated standard and reports findings. The author remains the author. The reviewer is responsible for the quality of the review, not for the underlying data.

Authoring means taking responsibility for the survey data, the assumptions, the method and the conclusions, whoever physically typed the words. A report drafted by someone else and then adopted, signed and submitted under your name is authored by you.

The awkward middle is the arrangement where a reviewer marks up a draft, the author makes the changes, and the reviewer then signs. That is authoring in substance, and it should be priced and insured accordingly. Our note on signing off an AI-assisted draft sets out how that plays out where the first draft came from a drafting tool rather than from a junior colleague.

Where the draft is AI-assisted, the verification work is specific: check every citation against the source, check the policy edition, check that flagged gaps have been filled with real site data, and check that nothing has been asserted about the site that nobody has observed.

Scope statements that protect both parties

A scope statement takes ten minutes and prevents most arguments. It should state, in plain terms:

• The documents reviewed, by title, revision and date
• The standard or guidance the review was carried out against
• What was not done: no site visit, no re-survey, no re-modelling, no check of third party data
• The data the reviewer has relied on and from whom it came
• Whether the reviewer is authoring, adopting or commenting
• Who may rely on the review and for what purpose

The reliance clause matters. A review addressed to a developer that ends up appended to a planning application is being read by the council, by objectors and possibly by an inspector. Decide at the outset whether you are content with that and say so.

Our guide to commissioning a peer review covers the same ground from the client's side, and the two documents should agree.

Site visits and when a reviewer needs one

The honest answer is that it depends on what the report asserts about conditions on the ground.

A review of a planning policy argument or a viability appraisal can usually be done from the desk. A review of a habitat condition assessment, a tree survey, a structural report or a contamination desk study cannot, because the report's value rests on observations that only a site visit can test.

Where a visit is not possible, say so and record the consequence. A reviewer who has not visited and does not say so is exposed if the site turns out to differ from the description.

Practical middle ground: a short visit focused on the two or three features that decide the assessment. You do not need to repeat the survey to confirm that the building has the roof void the report describes.

Recording assumptions and limitations

A limitations section is not boilerplate. It is the part of the document that defines what you did and did not check, and it is the first thing read when something goes wrong.

Write it specifically. "Habitat condition for parcels 3 and 7 could not be verified because the survey was carried out in February and the criteria require growing season data" is useful. "This report is subject to normal limitations" is not.

Where the underlying draft carried placeholders or flagged missing facts, record whether each was resolved and how. A drafting tool that inserts a marker where site data is absent is doing the reviewer a favour, and the reviewer's job is to close each marker with real information rather than to delete it.

Date every assumption. Policy editions change, climate change allowances are revised, and metrics are updated, so an assumption that was correct in March may not be in October.

Fee structures for review work

Price the liability, not the hours. A review that takes four hours and carries the same exposure as authoring a report should not be priced at a fraction of the authoring fee.

Three structures work in practice. A fixed fee per document, where the scope is tightly defined and the document is of known length. An hourly rate with a cap and a break clause, where the quality of the draft is unknown. And a two-stage fee, where a short first-pass assessment of the draft is charged separately and the full review is quoted only once the reviewer has seen what they are dealing with.

The second stage quote protects you from the draft that needs rebuilding. Agree in advance that if the first pass shows the document is not reviewable, the engagement converts to an authoring commission at authoring rates or ends there.

When to decline

Declining is a professional act, not a failure. The situations that should trigger it:

1. The subject matter falls outside your competence, or outside the part of your field you actually practise in.
2. The underlying data is missing or inadequate, and no amount of review will fix it.
3. The client asks for a conclusion rather than a review.
4. There is a conflict of interest, which our note on advising both sides covers.
5. The timescale does not allow the work to be done properly.
6. Your insurer will not cover the activity.

Say no early and in writing. A declined commission costs a fee. A signed report you should not have signed costs considerably more.

Reviewers listed in the professional directory receive requests with the draft attached, so the first-pass assessment can be done before any commitment is made. Report types are labelled honestly as professional required or professional recommended, and the full report index shows which is which.

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.