Reading a drafted planning balance critically

A planning balance drafted report section is the part most likely to read well and say nothing. The test it has to meet is set by section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004: the application is determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. That is an instruction to weigh, reach a view and state it. A draft that lists benefits, lists harms and then observes that the decision maker will need to consider them has described the exercise rather than performed it.

Read your draft balance with one question in mind. If an officer copied this section into a committee report, would it support a recommendation, or would they have to write the reasoning themselves?

What the section has to do

Four moves, in order.

Identify the policies of the development plan that are most important for determining the application, and say whether the proposal accords with the plan read as a whole. Not policy by policy. As a whole, which means confronting the case where the scheme complies with eight policies and conflicts with the two that matter.

Identify the material considerations that pull the other way, including national policy.

Attribute weight to each, with a reason for the weight attached.

State the conclusion as a conclusion.

A draft typically does the first and second well, because they are retrieval tasks against policy text, and does the third and fourth poorly, because they are judgements. That split is the thing to look for. The wider pattern of what drafts get right about structure and wrong about evidence shows up here in its sharpest form.

Weight is a judgement, and it belongs to someone

The courts have long treated the weight to be given to a material consideration as a matter for the decision maker, subject to rationality, with the question of whether something is capable of being material being one of law. The practical consequence for drafting is that you cannot assert weight in the abstract. You attribute it, and you say why.

So "the heritage harm attracts significant weight" is an empty sentence. "The harm is less than substantial, at the lower end, because the affected element is a rear boundary wall rather than the principal elevation, and the statutory duty requires considerable importance and weight to be given to it" is an argument. Same conclusion, different document.

Watch for weight adverbs used as decoration. Substantial, considerable, limited, moderate, great: each of those has acquired a meaning in heritage and Green Belt decisions, and scattering them without reasons invites an inspector to substitute their own view with nothing in your text to anchor against.

Where drafted balances read as neutral

Three patterns recur, and all three are detectable in a minute.

The first is symmetry. Benefits and harms presented in matched lists of similar length, with no indication which outweighs which. A real balance is lopsided, because most applications are.

The second is the unconcluded paragraph. A section that sets out the considerations and ends with a sentence about the authority weighing them in the round. Delete that sentence and write the conclusion.

The third is hedge stacking. Several qualifiers in one claim, which reads as caution and amounts to a refusal to commit. One hedge per claim is enough, and the honest form is to name the uncertainty once and move on.

The reason these appear is structural. The drafting is grounded in policy text and in what the applicant has supplied, and neither of those contains a view. The view has to be added by the person who signs the document, which is also the point made about where site judgement cannot be drafted in a design statement.

Harm that has to be named rather than hedged

The harms section is where credibility is won. An officer reading a statement that finds no harm at all in a scheme with a 2 metre blank flank wall on a boundary stops trusting the rest of it.

Name the harm, size it and say what mitigates it. Overlooking to two first floor windows at 14 metres, mitigated by obscure glazing secured by condition. Loss of three category C trees, replaced at a stated ratio. A 45 degree line breach to one habitable room, set against the room's dual aspect. That is the register that reads as professional.

And where the harm is real and unmitigated, say so and argue that it is outweighed. That is a stronger position than denying it, because the authority will find it anyway and the denial costs you the benefit of the doubt on everything else.

Benefits that need evidence attached

Benefits claimed without evidence get little weight, and drafts are prone to claiming the generic set: housing delivery, economic activity during construction, support for local services, efficient use of land.

Each of those can carry weight if it is quantified and sourced. Housing delivery carries more weight where the authority cannot demonstrate a five year supply, and the effect of housing land supply on applicants is the evidence that converts a generic claim into a weighted one. Construction employment needs a figure with a method. Affordable housing above policy requirement needs the tenure split and the mechanism.

Where a benefit cannot be evidenced, drop it. A list of eleven benefits, of which three are evidenced, reads worse than a list of three.

The presumption and when it engages

The presumption in favour of sustainable development in the National Planning Policy Framework operates differently for plan making and for decision taking, and in decision taking it has two limbs: one for proposals that accord with an up-to-date development plan, and the tilted balance for cases where the relevant policies are out of date or the authority cannot demonstrate the required housing land supply.

Two cautions for anyone reviewing a draft.

First, the tilted balance is not a general presumption in favour of development, and it does not disapply the development plan. It changes what has to outweigh what, and it is itself qualified. A draft that invokes it as a conclusion rather than as a framework for the remaining analysis has not understood it. The mechanics of what the presumption actually does are worth checking against the draft's wording.

Second, and this one is specific to AI-assisted drafting: never copy a Framework paragraph number out of generated text. The Framework was renumbered in December 2024 and re-issued on 17 August 2026 with policy-coded chapters in place of paragraph numbers, and a draft produced from older training material will cite numbering that no longer exists. Open the current edition on gov.uk, find the policy, cite it by its current reference and state the edition date. An inspector who spots a citation to a superseded paragraph will discount the document.

Rewriting a balance so it commits

Take the draft and do four things to it.

1. Delete every sentence that describes the exercise rather than performing it.
2. Convert each weight adverb into a clause beginning "because".
3. Strike any benefit you cannot evidence, and any harm you have denied rather than mitigated.
4. Write a conclusion that states the outcome you say should follow, and check that nothing above it contradicts it.

Four passes, perhaps an hour on a householder statement and half a day on a major. That hour is the difference between a document an officer can use and one they have to rewrite. Where a reviewer or a client needs the reasoning explained rather than the text improved, the approach in explaining an AI-assisted draft to a client or a committee is the companion to this one.

One honest uncertainty: there is no settled convention on how much reasoning a planning balance in an applicant's statement should contain, and some authorities prefer a short statement of position while others want the full analysis. Ask the case officer at pre-application stage which they would rather read.

PlanScope drafts are structured to UK planning policy, cite policy sources and flag missing facts with a clear marker rather than inventing them, and the balance section is one where that marker does real work. See PlanScope pricing for the tiers that allow in-platform editing and section regeneration, and the professional directory for reviewers who can sign off a draft before submission.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.