Reading a CV against a validation requirement

Checking a consultant cv planning validation requirement against the actual wording on the council's local list takes about ten minutes and saves a three-week invalidation. The mistake is to check competence in the abstract. A specialist can be well qualified, insured, chartered and entirely wrong for a requirement that says "prepared by a suitably qualified arboriculturist with experience of veteran tree assessment", because the requirement names a thing the CV has to evidence.

So read the requirement first, then the CV, and match one against the other line by line.

Where the requirement is actually written

Three places, and they have different force.

The national requirements are set out in the application form and the Development Management Procedure Order 2015: the completed form, the plans, ownership certificates, the design and access statement where one is required, the fee and the biodiversity gain statement. These are not negotiable.

The local list is published by each authority and carries the requirements it adds. It is the document that contains the competence wording, and it is the document people do not read. Local list requirements have to be published and kept current, and a requirement on a list the authority has not reviewed within the preceding two years is vulnerable to challenge, so note the publication date before you argue about substance.

The third place is a condition on a previous permission, which may specify the author of a document to be submitted at discharge stage. Conditions bind more tightly than validation lists, and their wording is often older and stricter.

Reading the wording literally

Four common formulations, each meaning something different.

"By a suitably qualified person" is the loosest. It sets a standard of relevance rather than a credential, and a specialist with directly comparable experience and no letters after their name can satisfy it.

"By a competent person" imports a defined concept in some regimes and a general one in others, which we set out in what competent person means in planning legislation. Where legislation supplies the definition, the definition wins.

"By a chartered [discipline]" requires registration, and a company's chartered status does not transfer to an unregistered employee who writes the report.

"By a licensed [discipline]" requires an actual licence issued by a named body, and this is the one where a shortfall is not a validation problem but a legal one. Protected species work needs a licensed ecologist under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and no amount of experience substitutes.

Watch for the standard being cited as well as the person. "In accordance with BS 5837:2012" or "following the CIEEM guidelines" tells you the method the report has to follow, and a CV full of relevant projects carried out to a different method still fails the requirement.

Matching project experience to the site type

Once the credential is satisfied, look at what the CV says the person has done.

The relevant comparison is the constraint, not the building type. An ecologist with twenty barn conversions behind them is a good match for a barn conversion with a bat roost and a weak match for a site in a nutrient neutrality catchment, because the second problem is a nutrient budget calculation and a mitigation strategy rather than a roost survey.

Things worth looking for on a CV in this context:

• projects with the same designation or constraint, named
• projects in the same authority or a neighbouring one, which means the local validation and consultee practice is familiar
• appeal or inquiry experience, if there is any prospect of the report being tested
• the size band of the schemes, because a specialist whose work is all householder scale may not have produced evidence for a major application
• the years each project ran, which tells you whether the experience is current

A CV listing a hundred clients and no projects is a marketing document. Ask for five relevant projects with dates and a one-line description of the issue on each.

Recent work against historic experience

Currency matters for two reasons.

The first is that methods and policy change. An air quality specialist whose last assessment predates the current national guidance, or an energy consultant whose experience stops before the Part L 2021 uplift, will produce a report that reads as dated to a consultee who works with the current position daily.

The second is that the report itself may have a shelf life. Authorities commonly treat ecological survey data as current for a limited period, and design and heritage material can be overtaken by a new local plan. Our note on checking whether a survey is still valid sets out how authorities approach the question.

Long experience is not a weakness. An arboriculturist with thirty years of practice and a current understanding of BS 5837 is exactly who you want. The check is whether the recent portion of that experience covers the work you are commissioning.

Named authorship in a large practice

In a practice of any size, the person you speak to is often not the person who writes the report, and the requirement is written about the author.

Ask three questions at appointment. Who will carry out the site work, by name. Who will write the report, by name. Who will sign it, and in what capacity. Where the answers are three different people, ask which of them the requirement is being satisfied by, and get it in writing.

Ask also about review. A junior author with a chartered reviewer can satisfy a requirement where the reviewer takes responsibility on the face of the document, and cannot where the report is signed only by the author. The distinction shows up in the document's sign-off block, and an officer checking validation reads that block.

Where the practice proposes to sub-consult part of the work, the same questions apply to the sub-consultant, and the report needs to say who did what.

Asking for a sample report

The single most useful pre-appointment step, and the one people skip because it feels awkward.

Ask for a redacted example of a report of the same type, submitted to a local planning authority, ideally one that was accepted at validation. What you are looking for is not prose quality. It is whether the report addresses the tests the policy sets, whether the conclusions are expressed in the language the decision-maker needs, whether the assumptions are stated, and whether the limitations are declared honestly.

Two red flags. A report with no statement of limitations, because every survey has them. And a report whose conclusion is expressed as an opinion about acceptability rather than as findings against the relevant test, because that is the author doing the planning judgement instead of the evidence.

Where you need a reviewer rather than an author, for example to sign off a draft prepared in-house, the professional directory is the route to someone who can review and sign off, and the full report index shows which types carry a professional requirement in law rather than a recommendation.

Recording the check before submission

Write it down, in a file note, before the application goes in.

A workable note records the exact wording of the requirement, the source and publication date of the list or condition it came from, the named author and their credential, the evidence relied on for that credential, the relevant projects identified, and the date of the check. Two paragraphs is enough.

It does two jobs. If the authority queries authorship at validation, you answer the same day rather than going back to the consultant. And if the report is challenged later, at appeal or by a third party, the note shows the check was carried out at the time rather than reconstructed afterwards.

Where a requirement is ambiguous, ask the case officer in writing before submission and keep the reply. An officer's confirmation that a particular author satisfies a local list requirement is not binding on a successor, and it is still the best evidence available. The same discipline applies to financial evidence, where competence expectations are set out in professional standards rather than legislation, as covered in viability assessment competence and RICS standards.

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