Statements of common ground and shorter inquiries

A statement of common ground is the document that decides how long an inquiry sits. Everything the parties agree in writing beforehand is evidence nobody has to call, test or cross-examine, and on a well-prepared appeal the agreed material runs to the site description, the planning history, the policy framework, the technical baselines and most of the conditions. What is left is the dispute. An inquiry that opens with a thorough statement of common ground and a short list of main issues finishes in days rather than weeks, and the appellant pays for the difference either way.

What the document does

The statement is a joint document, signed or endorsed by the appellant and the local planning authority, recording the facts and policy matters that are not in dispute. It is not a pleading and it is not evidence of opinion. It records agreement.

The Planning Inspectorate expects one for an inquiry and often asks for one in a hearing. The inspector uses it to settle the main issues, to pare the timetable and to avoid sitting through uncontested evidence. A party that refuses to agree obvious facts is making a visible choice, and the inspector will notice.

It should be read alongside the statements of case. The statement of case sets out what each party argues. The statement of common ground sets out what neither party disputes. Between them they define the territory the proofs of evidence need to cover, and a proof that re-proves agreed facts is wasted expenditure.

Facts that should always be agreed

Start from the position that a fact is agreeable unless the authority has a reason to dispute it. In practice that covers a long list.

• The site description, area, existing use and surroundings.
• The planning history, with application references, decision dates and the outcome of each.
• The description of development and the application documents, by drawing number and revision.
• The designations affecting the site: flood zone, conservation area boundary, listed building grades and distances, Green Belt status, tree preservation orders.
• Technical baselines: traffic counts and their dates, background sound levels, air quality monitoring data, the biodiversity baseline, daylight and sunlight existing conditions.
• The consultation responses received and whether any objection was maintained.
• The affordable housing and obligations position as a matter of fact, separate from whether it is adequate.
• Fee, procedure and jurisdiction matters.

Agreeing a technical baseline is not agreeing the conclusion drawn from it. Two transport witnesses can agree the traffic counts and disagree completely about capacity, and saying so in the statement is the point.

Where a fact truly cannot be agreed, record the disagreement precisely rather than leaving the item out. A line saying the parties agree the count data and disagree on the growth factor applied is more useful to an inspector than silence.

Policy agreement and where it stops

Policy is the half that takes the drafting time.

What should be agreed: which development plan documents are adopted and when, which policies are relevant, the status of any emerging plan, the housing land supply position as a matter of arithmetic where it is not in issue, and the edition of national policy that applies. Listing the policies by number with their titles saves an afternoon.

What usually cannot be agreed: whether the proposal complies with a given policy, the weight to be given to an emerging plan, whether a policy is out of date, and how the balance falls. Those are the appeal.

A useful halfway step is to agree the wording of the test rather than its outcome. Where the issue is heritage, agreeing that the statutory duty applies and that the question is whether harm is less than substantial narrows the argument even though the answer stays contested. The same works for flood risk, where the vulnerability classification and the zone can be agreed and the sequential test conclusion cannot.

Where the refusal followed a committee decision against officer advice, the officer's report is often the most useful agreed document in the bundle, and the dynamics of committee refusals against officer advice explain why.

Drafting and the exchange timetable

Send the first draft. The party that drafts controls the structure and the order in which issues appear, and authorities under pressure generally welcome a draft they can mark up.

A workable sequence runs:

1. Appellant circulates a first draft within two weeks of the start letter, covering the uncontroversial material only.
2. Authority returns comments, with any disagreement marked rather than deleted.
3. Technical witnesses on each side speak directly to agree baselines, separately from the planning witnesses.
4. A second draft adds the policy section and the agreed conditions.
5. The statement is finalised and submitted by the date in the timetable, usually alongside or shortly before proofs.
6. A short addendum is produced if anything moves after exchange.

Two habits make the process work. Keep the statement free of argument, because a paragraph that reads as advocacy will be struck and will slow the whole document down. And deal with conditions in a separate schedule, since conditions are usually agreed last and a late condition should not reopen the main text.

The effect on inquiry sitting days

Inquiry costs are driven by sitting days, and sitting days are driven by the number of witnesses and the length of cross-examination.

Every agreed baseline removes a round of evidence. Agreeing the traffic counts removes an afternoon. Agreeing the heritage asset designations and their significance removes the first half of a heritage witness's examination. Agreeing the conditions removes a round-table session, or shortens it to the three conditions still in dispute.

The saving is more than money. A shorter inquiry means less exposure to a point going badly, a tighter focus on the issues the appellant is strongest on, and a decision sooner.

The reverse is also true. An inquiry that opens with a dispute about what the planning history is, or whether a drawing was superseded, loses the inspector's confidence in both parties at once.

Where the authority will not agree

Some authorities will not engage, usually because the case officer has no time rather than because of tactics.

Three responses work. Escalate politely to the authority's legal officer or planning manager with a deadline, copied to the case officer at the Inspectorate. Put the unagreed material into your own evidence as a statement of fact with the source attached, so the inspector has it even without agreement. And record in correspondence that agreement was sought, because an unreasonable refusal to agree obvious facts is the kind of behaviour that supports a costs application.

Third parties sometimes want to be part of the statement. They cannot be, because it is an agreement between the main parties, but a recognised party can produce its own statement of agreed facts with the appellant, and the practical limits of third-party involvement in someone else's appeal set out where that sits.

Using it to focus the proofs

Once the statement is settled, go back through each proof of evidence and delete everything the statement already covers.

What is left should be the witness's analysis of the disputed issues, with cross-references to the statement for the factual foundation. A proof structured that way is shorter, easier to cross-examine from, and far easier for the inspector to follow into the decision letter.

One practical test. If a paragraph of a proof could be replaced by a cross-reference to the statement of common ground, replace it. Witnesses resist this because they want their evidence to stand alone, and the answer is that the statement is part of their evidence.

A thorough planning statement prepared at application stage makes all of this faster, because the policy list, the site description and the history are already assembled and only need updating. Appeal decisions are indicative of approach rather than binding, and the practical use of them is covered in using appeal decisions in a planning application.

Draft your appeal documents and have them reviewed before submission by browsing the report categories.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. 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.