Section 62A applications: applying direct to the Inspectorate

A section 62A application is one made directly to the Planning Inspectorate instead of to the local planning authority, and it is available only where the government has designated that authority as underperforming. The power sits in section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, inserted by the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013. It is a narrow route, used rarely, and the decision is taken by an inspector rather than by the council.

Designation is not a judgement about whether a council is pleasant to deal with. It is a statistical exercise against published criteria, and it applies to a category of development rather than to every application the authority handles.

What section 62A allows

Where an authority is designated, an applicant may submit a relevant application directly to the Secretary of State, in practice the Planning Inspectorate, and the Inspectorate determines it. The procedure is set out in the Town and Country Planning (Section 62A Applications) (Procedure and Consequential Amendments) Order 2013.

The route covers applications for planning permission in the designated category and certain connected applications, including some approvals of details and applications to vary conditions on a permission granted through the same route. The council does not decide the application, though it is consulted and its development plan still applies. Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 is unaffected, so the inspector determines the application in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.

Choosing the route is the applicant's decision. Designation does not compel anyone to bypass the council, and most applicants in a designated area continue to apply locally.

How an authority becomes designated

The government publishes designation criteria and assesses authorities against them, separately for major development and for non-major development. Two measures are used.

• Speed: the proportion of decisions made within the statutory period or an agreed extension of time
• Quality: the proportion of decisions overturned on appeal, measured against the authority's total decisions in the category

The specific percentage thresholds have been revised several times since 2013, and the assessment periods move each year, so read the current published criteria rather than relying on figures from an older article. Designations are announced by the department, reviewed periodically, and lifted when performance recovers.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 contains powers relating to the measurement of planning authority performance, and the detail of how they will be used sits in secondary legislation. Verify the position as at the date you are advising, because commencement has been staged.

Which applications can use the route

The category matters. An authority designated for major development does not open the route for a householder extension, and the reverse is equally true.

Certain applications stay with the council whatever the designation. Listed building consent, advertisement consent and applications for a lawful development certificate are separate consent regimes. Where a proposal needs both planning permission and another consent, it is usually a poor idea to split the two between the Inspectorate and the council, because the decisions then run on unconnected timetables.

Applications under the route are not appeals, so the question of what an authority may lawfully take into account is the same as in a local application. That is a different question from the narrow scope of a prior approval, where the council may consider only specified matters.

How the Planning Inspectorate handles them

The Inspectorate validates the application, publicises it, consults the local planning authority and statutory consultees, and takes representations from neighbours and interested parties. An inspector then determines it, usually on the papers, with a site visit.

Local consultation is not lost. The council responds as a consultee and will normally set out how the proposal sits against its adopted policies. Parish councils, neighbours and amenity groups can make representations in the ordinary way. What changes is who weighs them.

There is no right of appeal against a section 62A decision under section 78, because the decision has already been taken at national level. The remaining challenge is judicial review on a point of law, which is a high bar and a short deadline. That asymmetry is worth weighing before choosing the route, since a refused local application leaves a full appeal available.

Fees and timescales

A fee is payable to the Secretary of State rather than to the council, calculated under the current planning fees regulations. Fees are indexed and change, so take the figure from the current schedule at the point of submission.

Determination periods follow the familiar pattern for the category of development, with the statutory clock running from validation. In practice the timetable depends on the Inspectorate's caseload, and the honest position is that the route has not been used often enough to give anyone reliable expectations about speed. Some applicants have found it quicker than a designated council, and others have not.

There is also a softer cost. A case officer in a local authority will often pick up the telephone about a drawing discrepancy or an ambiguous red line. A national case file is handled at arm's length, and the instinct is to write rather than to ring.

What to do instead in a slow authority

Designation is a signal, and acting on the signal locally is often the better move. Three tools exist and all of them are underused.

An agreed extension of time removes the pressure that makes a case officer refuse a scheme simply to beat the clock. A planning performance agreement sets a written timetable with named officers and agreed milestones, and larger authorities will enter one for a fee on a scheme of any size. And a properly used pre-application service settles the contested points before validation, which is where the time actually goes.

None of that helps where the authority will not engage at all. That is the situation the route was designed for, and in that narrow case it does the job.

Whether the route is worth using

Four considerations decide it in my experience.

1. Whether the authority's poor performance affects your category of application at all, since designation is category specific.
2. Whether your scheme depends on local negotiation, because planning obligations are harder to negotiate with a decision maker who has no ongoing relationship with the site.
3. Whether the loss of the section 78 appeal right matters, which it does on a marginal scheme.
4. Whether a section 106 agreement is needed, since the council remains the body that enforces obligations relating to its area.

Schemes that suit the route are policy compliant, evidentially complete and unlikely to need negotiation. Schemes that need a conversation about affordable housing tenure or a design compromise usually do better locally, even in a slow authority, where an agreed extension of time and a planning performance agreement are available.

The other practical point is that the evidence base has to be finished on submission. An inspector reading a national case file will not chase a missing report in the way a case officer sometimes does, so the supporting documents need to be complete and internally consistent. Where a scheme turns on a housing land supply argument, the numbers in the standard method for local housing need need to be set out properly, and where a permission is later varied the drafting questions covered in the note on when part of a permission survives apply in the same way.

Whichever route you choose, the submission pack is the same. Browse the planning report types to see what a complete application looks like for your category of development.

This is general guidance, not legal advice, and designation status changes. Check the current designation list and criteria on gov.uk, or take advice from a qualified professional, before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.