Questions to ask at a developer consultation event

The most useful thing to know before walking into a developer's consultation event is that anything you say there is not an objection. Comments made at an exhibition, on a feedback card or through a project website go to the developer, not to the council. If you want your view to count in the decision, you have to say it again during the statutory consultation period once the application is registered, which is normally 21 days.

With that settled, the event becomes worth attending for a different reason. It is the one point where the scheme can still change without great cost, and the people standing by the boards usually have the answers that the eventual application documents will bury.

What the event is for

Pre-application community engagement in England is largely voluntary. It is encouraged by national policy and by each council's own statement of community involvement, which every local planning authority has to prepare under section 18 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and which sets out how it will involve people in planning decisions.

Confusingly, the applicant submits a document with a very similar name. A Statement of Community Involvement accompanying a planning application is the developer's account of who they consulted, what was said and what changed as a result. That document, not the council's policy, is what the case officer reads.

So the event has two purposes, and they are not the same. The developer wants to identify the objections that could cost them at committee. You want the information that lets you make a specific, evidenced representation later.

Asking about parameters rather than pictures

The images on the boards are usually illustrative. On an outline application, what actually gets permitted is the set of parameter plans: maximum and minimum building heights, development zones, access points, land use areas and the amount of floorspace or the number of homes.

Ask which application type is coming. Outline with all matters reserved, outline with access to be determined, full, or a hybrid of the two. Then ask what will be fixed by the parameter plans, because everything else can change at reserved matters without any further public consultation on the principle.

The follow-up question is the one that produces useful answers. Ask what the maximum height shown on the parameter plan is in metres above ordnance datum, not in storeys. Storeys are elastic. Levels are not.

If the answer is a range, ask what would have to happen for the top of that range to be built, and what the applicant would have to do to exceed it.

Access, drainage and phasing

These three topics generate most of the lasting effects on a neighbourhood, and they are the ones where a specific question gets a specific answer.

On access, ask where every vehicle access point is, whether any is for construction only, what the construction traffic route is, and whether the highway authority has already commented. Ask whether any land outside the applicant's ownership is needed to form the access or the visibility splays. That last question occasionally produces a very interesting pause.

On drainage, ask what the surface water discharge rate is in litres per second, where the water goes, and whether the lead local flood authority has seen the strategy. If the site currently floods, say when and how deep, and ask whether that is in their model.

On phasing, ask how many phases, in what order, over what period, and what the construction working hours would be. Ask whether the play space and landscaping are in the first phase or the last. They are almost always in the last.

How responses will be recorded

Three questions, and write the answers down with the date.

1. Will individual comments be recorded verbatim, summarised, or counted by theme?
2. Will the feedback report be published, and will people who comment receive a copy?
3. Who is the named person responsible for the consultation, and what is their email address?

The honest answer to the first is usually that comments are grouped by theme. That is not sinister, but it does mean a distinctive point made once is likely to disappear into a category called "highways concerns". Submitting the same point in writing, in your own words, keeps it identifiable.

Our note on the community feedback section of a statement of community involvement sets out what that document is supposed to contain, which is useful to know before you read one.

Whether the design can still change

Ask directly: what has already been fixed, and by what? Land contracts with conditional obligations, an existing outline permission, a site allocation in the local plan, or an agreed position with the highway authority all narrow what is actually open.

Then ask the more revealing version of the question. What changed after the last consultation event, if there was one, and what would have to be true for the layout to change again? A team that can name a specific change is engaging. A team that says everything is still on the table at an event three weeks before submission is not.

Be realistic about scale. Reducing 180 homes to 60 is not a consultation outcome. Moving a bin store away from a boundary, adding a pedestrian link, changing a boundary treatment, relocating an access, shifting the tallest block to the interior of the site, retaining a tree group: those things do change, and they change at this stage rather than later.

Following up in writing

Send a short email the same week, to the named contact, listing your questions and any answers you were given. Ask for the outstanding ones in writing. Keep a copy.

Copy in your parish or town council if there is one, because parish councils are consulted formally on applications and a coordinated local position carries more weight than fifteen separate letters that make the same point.

When the application is submitted, check the statement of community involvement against your own record of what you were told. Differences between the two are legitimate material to put before the case officer, and they are noticed.

If the council already holds information about the site that has not been published, such as correspondence with the applicant or a consultee response, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 provide a route to it. Our guide to environmental information requests in planning explains how to frame one so it is not refused on cost grounds.

Turning the answers into a representation

A representation that works is short, specific and tied to planning matters. Highway safety, drainage and flood risk, loss of daylight, noise, design and character, heritage impact, the effect on protected trees and the development plan itself are all material. Loss of a view, the effect on property values and the identity of the developer are not.

Where your concern is highways, our guide to objecting on highway safety without being an engineer sets out what evidence actually moves a case officer. The same approach works for drainage: dated photographs of standing water, with locations marked on a plan, beat any amount of assertion.

Understanding which technical documents a scheme of this type has to produce also tells you where to look for the weaknesses, and the full list of report types is a reasonable starting point for that.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the consultation arrangements and deadlines with your local planning authority, because they vary and they are strictly applied.