Statement of common ground or a proof of evidence

A statement of common ground records what the parties agree. A proof of evidence records what one witness thinks. Mix the two and you hand the other side a gift, because an inspector reading an opinion inside an agreed document will treat the whole thing with suspicion.

Both are inquiry documents under the Town and Country Planning (Inquiries Procedure) (England) Rules 2000, and both arrive on dates fixed by the Planning Inspectorate's timetable rather than by the parties. The practical difference is authorship. A statement of common ground is a joint document signed off by the appellant and the local planning authority. A proof is signed by one named witness, who will stand up and be cross-examined on it.

What each document is for

The statement of common ground narrows the inquiry. Its job is to take off the table everything that does not need to be argued, so that the inspector and the advocates spend their time on the real dispute.

A proof of evidence does the opposite. It states a case on a contested matter, sets out the reasoning, and identifies the material the witness relies on. It is personal to the witness, which is why professional independence matters and why a witness who signs a proof drafted entirely by someone else is in difficulty the moment questioning starts.

Facts that belong in a common ground statement

Anything capable of agreement, and in practice that covers more than people expect. Site description, area and boundaries. Planning history with application references and decision dates. The development plan, its adoption date and the policies both sides consider relevant. Agreed figures such as floorspace, unit numbers, parking counts or distances. Agreed technical outputs, for instance that a transport assessment used the correct trip rates even if its conclusions are disputed. Confirmation of which reasons for refusal remain live and which have been withdrawn.

Topic-specific statements are now common on larger inquiries. Separate statements on highways, heritage, ecology and five year housing land supply, each agreed between the relevant pair of witnesses, cut far more inquiry time than a single general document.

What does not belong: any sentence that begins "the appellant considers". If a proposition cannot be agreed, record the disagreement in one line and move on. A statement of common ground that honestly says "the parties do not agree on the weight to be given to policy X" is more use than one that papers over it.

Structure and length of a proof

Short proofs read better and survive cross-examination better. The discipline is to make each section carry one proposition, evidenced, and to put the detail in appendices where it can be checked without interrupting the argument.

A working order:

1. Qualifications and experience, and the witness's involvement with the site
2. Scope of the evidence and which reason for refusal or main issue it addresses
3. The policy framework, cited precisely by document, edition and policy reference
4. The factual position, cross-referring to the statement of common ground rather than repeating it
5. Assessment against each policy test in turn
6. The planning balance on that topic
7. Conclusions

Our note on proof of evidence structure goes through each of those sections in more detail, and the companion piece on proofs and rebuttals covers what belongs in a rebuttal rather than in the main proof.

One habit worth keeping: never assert a fact in a proof that is already agreed in the statement of common ground. Cross-refer to it. Restating agreed facts in your own words invites an argument about whether your version differs from the agreed one.

Timetables for exchange

Under the Inquiries Procedure Rules, proofs of evidence are sent in not later than four weeks before the inquiry opens, unless the Inspectorate's timetable says otherwise. Since the Rosewell review changed how inquiries are managed, the Inspectorate usually issues a bespoke timetable with its own dates for the statement of common ground, proofs, rebuttals and any topic papers, and those dates govern.

Where a proof runs to more than 1,500 words, a summary must be provided, and the summary is what the witness reads at the inquiry. Write it as a document in its own right rather than cutting and pasting the first sentence of each paragraph.

Plan the statement of common ground to be finished before proofs are drafted, not alongside them. Doing it the other way round is how parties end up with proofs that contradict their own agreed document.

Where a common ground statement shortens an inquiry

The clearest gains come on the technical topics. If the highway authority and the appellant's transport planner can agree the trip generation, the junction capacity outputs and the accident record, the inquiry is left with the planning judgement about whether the residual effect is severe. That can turn a day of evidence into an hour.

Housing land supply is the other big one. Agreeing the base date, the requirement figure, the methodology and the status of each disputed site reduces a notoriously long exercise to a short list of sites that are actually in dispute. Even agreeing the arithmetic, so that the only dispute is over inputs, saves time.

And on heritage, agreeing the identification of heritage assets, their grade and the elements that contribute to their significance leaves the inquiry to argue about the degree of harm. That is the only part an inspector actually needs to hear argued.

Avoiding contradiction between the two

Three failure modes recur.

A witness signs a proof that disputes a fact their own side has already agreed. Check every proof against the signed statement of common ground before it goes in, line by line, and do it as a specific task rather than a general read-through.

A statement of common ground is signed by someone with no authority to bind the party, usually because the officer who negotiated it has not cleared it internally. Ask who is signing, and when.

A topic statement agreed between two technical witnesses conflicts with the planning witness's proof, because nobody circulated the drafts. One person should hold all the documents and check them against each other.

An illustrative example

An appeal against refusal of 60 dwellings with three reasons for refusal: highway safety, landscape impact and loss of best and most versatile agricultural land. The parties agree a general statement of common ground covering the site, the planning history and the development plan, plus a highways topic statement in which the authority accepts the visibility splays and the trip rates. The highway reason for refusal narrows to the acceptability of the access on a 40mph road, which takes under an hour of evidence instead of a day. The landscape and agricultural land reasons go to full proofs from two witnesses each. This is illustrative, and the way any real inquiry is timetabled is a matter for the Inspectorate.

If the appeal is a householder case rather than a full inquiry, none of this applies in the same way, and the householder appeal route has its own much shorter procedure with no proofs at all.

Independence and the witness's position

A proof of evidence is the witness's own professional opinion, given to the inspector. That duty sits above the client's interest in winning, and the institutes' conduct rules say so. Where the honest answer undermines part of your own case, say it plainly in the proof rather than leaving it to be extracted in cross-examination, where it will do far more damage. The related point about independence and conflicts in appeal evidence matters before you accept an instruction.

A clear Planning Statement at application stage reduces the work at this end considerably, because the policy framework and the site facts have already been set out once and can be agreed rather than re-litigated.

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