Who carries the professional indemnity risk on a report

Professional indemnity for planning reports attaches to whoever signs, and that is the whole of the answer for most disputes. The person who drafts a document, whether that is a junior planner, a client filling in a template or an AI-assisted drafting tool, carries no professional liability to the local planning authority. The professional who puts their name and their institute membership on the front cover does.

That makes reviewing somebody else's draft a different commercial proposition from writing your own. You are taking on the same exposure for a document whose assumptions you did not choose, on a site you may not have visited, and often for a lower fee. The way to price it is to work out what you are actually signing.

What a reviewer is actually signing

A signature on a planning report is a representation that the work meets the standard expected of a member of your profession, that the methodology is appropriate, and that the conclusions follow from the data. It is not a proofreading exercise.

Three things follow. You own the assumptions as well as the text, so an assumed groundwater level or an assumed floor area becomes yours once you sign. You own the omissions, and a missing survey is harder to defend than a wrong figure. And you own the citations, which means checking that a policy reference quoted in the draft actually says what the draft claims, particularly where the Framework has been re-issued and paragraph numbers have moved.

Drafting tools that insert a flag wherever site data is missing help with the second of those. A document that carries a to-be-confirmed marker against a level or a distance is telling you exactly where to do your own work, and signing it off with the marker still in place is the clearest way to create a problem for yourself.

Scope, assumptions and exclusions in the appointment

The appointment letter does more to control exposure than the insurance does. It should state the deliverable, the standard or guidance being followed, the information you are relying on and who supplied it, what you have expressly not done, and the limits of your liability.

Useful clauses in practice:

• A defined scope that names the report and the version, so a later revision is a new instruction rather than an implied continuation.
• An assumptions and limitations schedule reproduced in the report itself, not buried in the engagement terms.
• A liability cap expressed as a sum, together with a net contribution clause so you are not carrying another consultant's share.
• A statement that the report is for the named client for the stated purpose, with third-party reliance excluded unless separately agreed.
• A clear position on site data: whether you verified it, sampled it, or took it as given.

The last one is where review work goes wrong. A reviewer who neither verified the input data nor recorded that they were relying on the client for it has the worst of both positions.

Reliance letters and third-party reliance

Planning reports have a habit of travelling. A Flood Risk Assessment prepared for a developer is read by a lender, a purchaser, a warranty provider and eventually by whoever buys the fifth house on the site.

Absent an express agreement, your duty is to your client. A reliance letter extends it, usually to a named party, for a stated purpose, for a defined period, and commonly with the same liability cap as the original appointment. Charge for it, keep a register of who holds one, and check that your policy covers the extension before granting it. Blanket reliance addressed to "any interested party" is the version to refuse.

Note: assignment of the appointment and reliance are different mechanisms with different consequences, and a request for one is sometimes drafted as the other.

Where a draft author and a reviewer differ in exposure

The practical consequence is that a reviewer should treat the draft as a structured brief rather than as a finished document. Read the methodology first, decide whether it is the right one, and only then read the prose. A well-structured draft saves time on the framing and the policy scaffolding, and it does not save time on verification, which is where the liability sits. Be precise about what competence the document requires before you agree to sign anything.

Competence requirements set by statute or standard

Acting outside your competence is both a professional conduct issue and a potential insurance problem, because policies respond to claims arising from your professional business as declared.

Several planning report types have competence written into law or into policy rather than left to judgement. An Environmental Statement must be prepared by competent experts under the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations 2017. Biodiversity net gain work under the Environment Act 2021 expects the statutory metric to be completed by a competent person, with the gain plan approved by the authority. Protected species survey work and any mitigation licence require a suitably licensed ecologist under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. Land contamination reports are expected to follow BS 10175 and be prepared by suitably qualified and experienced people. A Fire Statement at Planning Gateway One, under the Building Safety Act 2022 framework and Article 9A of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, needs someone with fire engineering competence.

For each of those, a drafted report is a starting point for the qualified professional and not a substitute for them. Check your policy wording too, because fire safety and contamination exclusions became common after 2019 and a reviewer can find they are uninsured for precisely the document they were asked to sign.

Record keeping that protects the reviewer

Claims arrive years later, and they are defended on the file rather than on memory.

1. Keep the brief, the appointment, and every version of the draft you were sent, with dates.
2. Record who supplied each piece of site data and in what form.
3. Keep a written assumptions log, including the assumptions you rejected.
4. Note the site visit: date, weather, what you could and could not see, photographs.
5. Record the review itself as a checklist against the relevant standard, signed and dated.
6. Keep the file for a period matched to the limitation periods that apply to your work, which for construction-related advice can be considerably longer than six years.

Version control is the mundane one that matters most. Where a client amends a report after you signed it, your defence is the signed version and a clear record of what it contained.

Pricing a review against the risk carried

A review fee expressed as a small percentage of the original fee prices the reading time and ignores the exposure. Price instead for the work that actually discharges the duty: verifying the inputs, re-running or spot-checking the calculation, the site visit, the amendments, and a proportion for carrying the liability.

Be willing to decline. Where the draft rests on data you cannot verify, the honest options are to widen the scope and charge for the verification, to sign a narrower document with the limitation stated on its face, or to say no. Signing an unverified document at a discounted fee is the worst of the three, and it is the one that produces claims.

The same logic applies to the cost side of a commission. Understanding the cost of a contaminated land investigation programme or of budgeting a daylight and sunlight evidence base tells you what verification would actually involve, which is what a review fee has to cover. Reviewers can be found through the professional directory, and PlanScope's published prices are on the pricing page.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice, and insurance wording varies, so take advice from your broker and your institute before relying on any of it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.