Statement of common ground: what it agrees and what it cannot

A statement of common ground is a short signed document that records the facts and matters the main parties agree on before an inquiry, a hearing or a local plan examination. It carries no argument. A statement of common ground in planning exists to take the uncontested material off the table: site area, planning history, the policies of the development plan that apply, agreed survey outputs, distances and levels. What is left after that is the list of issues the inspector will actually test.

Inspectors read it early, and they read it as a shortcut. If the parties can agree that the site lies outside the Green Belt and that the highway authority raises no objection, those points do not need an afternoon of evidence.

What the document does in practice

The statement has one job, which is to narrow the case. It removes duplicated evidence, stops two witnesses proving the same uncontroversial point, and gives the inspector a single agreed factual base to work from.

Most statements run to a handful of pages under plain headings: the site and surroundings, the proposal as applied for, the relevant planning history, the development plan policies both sides accept as engaged, the national policy references, and the technical outputs neither side disputes. Some add a short list of agreed appeal or examination documents.

The discipline is factual. A sentence such as "the parties agree the site is 0.42 ha" belongs in it. A sentence such as "the parties agree the harm is less than substantial" almost never does, because that is a planning judgement, and one of the parties is being paid to argue it.

Where it is used

Two quite different settings use the same device, and it is worth keeping them apart.

On written representations appeals there is usually no statement of common ground at all, because the exchange of statements does the same work at lower cost. The device earns its keep once oral evidence and cross-examination are in prospect.

Examinations use it differently. There the statement often attaches to a single allocation and records what the authority and the site promoter agree about deliverability, access, constraints and phasing, which the inspector then weighs against the standard method figure for local housing need and the authority's supply position.

Facts that belong in it

The safe test is whether an independent surveyor, ecologist or highway engineer would produce the same answer regardless of who instructed them.

• Site area, ownership boundary as applied for, and the red line drawing reference
• Planning history with application numbers and decision dates
• Designations affecting the site, taken from the authority's own mapping
• Development plan policies engaged, with the adoption date of the plan
• Agreed technical outputs: trip rates used, flood zone classification, tree constraints, noise measurement results
• The list of documents before the inspector, with an agreed numbering
• Any matters the authority has confirmed it no longer pursues

That last bullet is the most useful line in the document. An authority that dropped a highway objection after further survey work should say so in writing, because otherwise the appellant prepares evidence against a reason for refusal that has quietly gone away.

Matters that cannot be agreed

Judgement is not common ground. Whether a rear extension harms the character of a conservation area, whether very special circumstances exist, whether the tilted balance applies, whether a scheme is sustainable development in the round: those are the questions the inquiry exists to answer.

A related trap is agreeing a conclusion that depends on a legal construction. If the parties disagree about what a condition means, they should record the disagreement plainly rather than paper over it with agreed wording. The same caution applies where part of a permission is in dispute and the question of whether part of a permission survives turns on how the grant is read.

Where agreement is partial, say so. Formulations like "the parties agree the 2019 survey was carried out to the relevant standard, but disagree on whether it remains current" are more useful to an inspector than silence.

Timing against the programme

The Planning Inspectorate sets timetables under the inquiries and hearings rules, and the statement normally has a deadline of its own. Work backwards from it.

1. Agree who leads the drafting, usually the appellant, within a week of the start letter.
2. Circulate a skeleton with headings and obvious agreed facts before proofs of evidence are written.
3. Resolve the technical annexes, which take longest, with the consultants talking directly.
4. Exchange a near-final draft in time for both sides to get internal sign-off.
5. Submit by the deadline, with any residual disagreement recorded rather than left blank.

Drafting after proofs are written is a common and expensive mistake. By then each side has committed to a position in evidence, and the natural instinct is to defend it rather than concede a fact that was never really in dispute.

Who signs it and what that binds

Signature is usually by the planning witness or the agent for each party, not by the client and not by counsel. A signed statement does not bind a party on matters of opinion, and it does not prevent an inspector from reaching a different factual finding on the evidence. It does make it awkward to resile from an agreed figure in cross-examination, which is the point.

Rule 6 parties, once granted that status, should be offered the chance to join or to produce their own statement. A parish council or a residents group that is left out often arrives at the inquiry disputing a distance measurement that everyone else settled weeks earlier.

How inspectors use it

Inspectors use it to write the main issues section of the decision. Read a handful of recent decisions and the pattern is visible: the agreed facts appear early, in a paragraph or two, and the reasoning then concentrates on the two or three contested judgements.

That gives the document a strategic edge as well as a procedural one. A party that gets a helpful fact agreed early, such as an accepted trip rate or the absence of a heritage asset within a certain distance, has narrowed the ground on which it can lose. And a party that agrees too much, particularly anything that reads as a planning judgement, has given away its case before the first witness is sworn.

For a prior approval or a simpler consent the device rarely appears, since the scope of what the council may consider is already tightly drawn. The limits on that scope are worth understanding separately if you are weighing whether an appeal is worth running, because they shape what evidence matters at all. See the note on what a council may and may not consider on prior approval.

If you are assembling the evidence base behind the statement, the supporting documents are usually where the time goes. PlanScope can draft the planning report types that sit under an appeal case, structured to UK planning policy, with missing site facts flagged rather than invented.

This is general guidance, not legal advice, and inquiry procedure varies with the case. Check the position with your local planning authority or 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.