Tracking a planning application on the public register

Every local planning authority in England has to keep a public register of planning applications, and it has to make it available for inspection at all reasonable hours. The duty sits in article 40 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, which also sets out what the register must contain: a copy of the application, the plans and drawings submitted with it, and particulars of the decision, including the conditions.

In practice you will use the council's online planning search rather than a paper file. Knowing what the register is legally required to hold is still useful, because it tells you what to ask for when something is missing from the website.

What the statutory register must contain

The register has two parts. One covers applications that have not been finally disposed of, meaning live cases. The other covers every application the authority has dealt with, which is the historical record.

For each entry the register holds the application and the accompanying plans and drawings, the date received, the reference number, and the decision with its date and conditions. Appeals and their outcomes are recorded too. The register also records the address of the land and a brief description of the development.

What the register does not have to include is every consultation response and every internal email. Councils publish most consultee responses as a matter of practice, and many publish the officer report, but the statutory minimum is narrower than what a good website shows. If a document you expect is absent, ask the council whether it exists rather than assuming the file is incomplete.

Separate registers exist for other things. Enforcement notices go on a register of enforcement and stop notices. Brownfield land registers, self-build registers and the register of previous approvals are all distinct records with their own rules.

Finding an application by reference or address

Three routes work, in roughly descending order of reliability.

The reference number is best. Council references usually encode the year and a sequence, and sometimes a suffix for the application type, so a householder application and a listed building consent for the same property carry different references. Quote the full reference including any suffix when you contact the council.

An address search works where the property has a clean postal address. It fails on new sites, on land without a number, and where the council has recorded the address differently from the way you would write it. If a search on the house number returns nothing, try the street alone and scan the list.

The weekly list is the third route and the most useful for keeping an eye on a neighbourhood. Councils publish a list of applications received and decided each week, and most let you filter by ward or parish. Working through a weekly list takes two minutes and catches the application your neighbour did not mention.

Where you are trying to establish what constraints affect a site rather than track an application, the national data service at planning.data.gov.uk holds published datasets on conservation areas, listed buildings, flood risk and other designations, drawn from council and government sources.

Reading the documents tab

The document list is where the real information sits, and it repays a systematic read rather than a scan.

• The application form gives the description of development, the applicant and agent, the ownership certificate and the answers on trees, flooding and parking
• The site location plan and block plan establish what land is included, which matters if you think the red line crosses land the applicant does not own
• The elevations and sections tell you height and massing, which the description of development usually does not
• Supporting statements carry the applicant's policy case; a Planning Statement is the document that sets out why the scheme should be approved
• Consultee responses arrive over the consultation period and are added as they come in
• The officer report or delegated report sets out the assessment and the recommendation

Check revision letters on drawings. A scheme amended after submission will have superseded drawings sitting alongside the current ones, and objections aimed at a superseded drawing carry little weight. The current drawing numbers are listed in the decision notice once issued, and before that in the case officer's latest document list.

Consultation dates and comment deadlines

Publicity is governed by article 15 of the 2015 Order. The standard period for comment following a site notice or a press notice is 21 days, and neighbour notification letters carry a stated date.

The deadline is not as absolute as it looks. The authority must take into account representations received before the decision is made, so a comment arriving after the published date but before determination should still be considered. A comment arriving after the decision notice is issued cannot be.

Two practical points. Where a scheme is amended materially during the process, the council may reconsult, which opens a fresh period. And where an application goes to committee, the deadline that matters for influencing the outcome is usually earlier than the formal consultation date, because the officer report is written before the meeting.

Following consultee responses as they arrive

Statutory and non-statutory consultees respond at their own pace, and their responses often decide the case.

On a flood risk case, watch for the Environment Agency and the lead local flood authority. On a heritage case, Historic England for higher grade assets and the council's own conservation officer for everything else. On access, the local highway authority, with National Highways where the strategic road network is affected. On ecology, the county or council ecologist and Natural England where a designated site or a protected species licence is in play. Parish and town councils, where they exist, comment on almost everything and carry real weight at committee.

A holding objection is worth understanding. Consultees frequently object pending further information rather than in principle, and the objection is withdrawn when the information arrives. An objection posted three weeks ago may already be resolved in correspondence that has not yet been uploaded.

Where the scheme has technical evidence you want to test, read the consultee response before reading the applicant's report. The consultee has already identified the weak points, and doing it that way round saves hours.

The officer report and when it appears

For a delegated decision, the officer report is written and signed off at the end of the process, and it usually appears on the register with or shortly after the decision notice. Reading it after the event is still worth doing, because it tells you which material considerations the council thought decisive.

For a committee decision, the report is published with the committee agenda, which must be available a set number of clear working days before the meeting under the local government access to information rules. That publication is the single most useful moment in the process for an objector or a supporter, because it sets out the recommendation and the reasoning in full while there is still time to speak.

Watch for a late items or update sheet published on the day. It carries changes to the recommendation, late representations and revised conditions, and it is where a recommendation occasionally reverses.

Decision notices and conditions

The decision notice is the operative document. Read it in full, including the drawing numbers, because the permission is for what is listed there and nothing else.

Conditions repay close attention. Pre-commencement conditions have to be discharged before work starts, and a separate application is needed for each discharge. Conditions limiting hours, numbers, materials or use are the ones neighbours later rely on when something goes wrong, so note them now rather than trying to reconstruct them in two years. Where a condition requires a scheme to be submitted and approved, the discharge application appears on the register under its own reference.

If permission is refused, the applicant has six months to appeal, or 12 weeks for a householder appeal, and the appeal appears in the register once lodged. Appeals are decided by the Planning Inspectorate and their documents are published separately.

For a broader view of how the rules that sit behind these decisions are changing, the planning law timeline is the place to follow updates, and the report index explains what each of the supporting documents in a document list is for.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Registers and publicity practice vary between councils, so check the position with the authority holding the application before relying on it.