Who pays when a consultee asks for more work

A lead local flood authority asks for infiltration testing that nobody scoped. The highway authority wants a junction modelled that was agreed as out of scope at pre-application. An ecologist's standing-advice response asks for a survey whose season closed in July. Each of those lands after validation, each costs money, and whether it comes out of the client's budget or the consultant's margin depends almost entirely on what the appointment says about additional services.

Most appointments say very little, which is why this argument happens so often and resolves so badly.

Why requests arrive after validation

Validation is a checklist exercise. The authority confirms that the forms, fee, plans and the documents on its published local list are present. It does not assess whether those documents are adequate, and in most authorities the validation officer is not the person who will read them.

Consultation then runs for 21 days under the Development Management Procedure Order, and that is when the substance gets looked at. A statutory consultee reading a flood risk assessment for the first time in week three of a thirteen-week determination can reasonably ask for something the applicant did not anticipate.

Two formal mechanisms sit behind these requests. For environmental impact assessment development, regulation 25 of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 allows the authority to require further information where the Environmental Statement is inadequate. For everything else, the request is an informal one with the implicit sanction that an unresolved consultee objection is difficult to overcome.

The distinction matters, because a regulation 25 request has a statutory footing and an informal request does not.

Scoping agreements as protection

The single most useful document in this argument is a written scoping agreement signed before the assessment work begins.

For environmental impact assessment, a formal scoping opinion can be requested from the authority, which consults its statutory consultees and issues a written opinion on what the Environmental Statement should cover. That opinion does not freeze the scope for all time, but a consultee asking for something outside its own scoping response has a weaker position and usually knows it.

Outside the environmental impact assessment regime the equivalent is a pre-application methodology agreement with the relevant consultee. Transport scope with the highway authority. Survey methodology and baseline with the environmental health officer. Survey effort and metric assumptions with the ecologist. Drainage approach and testing regime with the lead local flood authority.

What makes these agreements work is specificity. "Transport assessment to be agreed" protects nobody. "Transport assessment to cover the three junctions listed, with 2029 assessment year, TRICS-derived trip rates for the land uses stated, and no modelling of the trunk road junction" is a document you can hold up when the request arrives.

Where drainage and water connections are involved, the costs sit partly outside the planning process entirely, as our note on water and drainage connection costs on a small site sets out.

Fee variation clauses in appointments

The appointment should answer four questions before the project starts:

1. What is the agreed scope, by reference to a named scoping document rather than to a discipline.
2. What counts as an additional service, including a consultee request outside the agreed scope, a design change, a policy change and a second round of response.
3. At what rates additional services are charged, with a schedule by grade.
4. Who authorises additional work, and in what form.

A lump sum appointment with no additional services provision puts the whole risk on the consultant, who responds by pricing for the risk, by resisting the request, or by absorbing it and losing money. None of those serves the client.

The cleanest arrangement on a contentious application is a lump sum for the defined scope plus a drawn-down allowance for consultee responses, with unspent allowance returned. It prices the risk honestly and removes the argument at the moment it would otherwise arise.

Requests that exceed the policy basis

Not every request has to be met. National guidance on making an application is clear that information requirements should be proportionate and related to the development proposed, and local validation lists are supposed to reflect that.

So the first response to an unexpected request is a polite written question: what is the policy or statutory basis for this requirement, and how does it relate to a matter the decision turns on. Three outcomes follow.

Sometimes the basis is sound and the work has to be done. Sometimes the consultee is applying a standing requirement to a scheme it does not fit, and the request is withdrawn or narrowed when challenged. And sometimes the matter is real but can be dealt with by condition rather than before determination, which is the most useful outcome of the three.

Keep the exchange written and courteous. The consultee will be reading your next application too.

Negotiating the scope of a response

When the work is justified, the scope of the response is still negotiable. Four moves usually help.

Offer a technical note rather than a full assessment where the question is narrow. A two-page note answering the specific point, signed by a competent author, often satisfies a consultee that was asking a question rather than demanding a document.

Propose a condition. Where the information relates to detailed design rather than to the principle of development, a pre-commencement condition requiring the detail to be submitted and approved achieves the same protection for the authority without holding up the decision. The guidance on using conditions supports this where the condition meets the usual tests.

Agree a reduced scope in writing with the consultee directly, then copy the case officer, so the officer does not later ask for the original request to be met in full.

Where the request concerns a discipline with a long production time, such as a Transport Assessment requiring new counts, say so immediately and propose a programme rather than going quiet for six weeks.

Programme effect of each round

Every round has a cost in time as well as money, and the time cost is usually larger.

The season point is the one that wrecks programmes. A request for a survey whose window has closed means waiting for the next one, and no amount of fee resolves it. That is a scoping failure rather than a budget failure, and it is the strongest argument for agreeing survey effort before the season rather than after it.

Expect to agree an extension of time with the authority for anything beyond a single round. An extension is better than a refusal, and officers generally prefer it, but it needs to be agreed rather than assumed.

Where an Environmental Statement is involved, a regulation 25 request stops the clock in practical terms, and the Environmental Impact Assessment must in any event be prepared by competent experts, which is a legal requirement under the 2017 Regulations rather than a preference.

Preventing repeat requests

Second and third rounds are the expensive ones, and they are usually caused by how the first response was presented rather than by its content.

A response schedule fixes most of it. Tabulate every point raised, by consultee, with the response, the document it appears in, and the page or paragraph reference. Submit it as a covering document with the revised material. A consultee who can find the answer does not repeat the question.

Two further habits help. Send the draft response to the consultee before formally submitting it, where the relationship allows, so that any remaining gap is identified informally. And ask the consultee to confirm in writing that its concerns are addressed, then send that confirmation to the case officer rather than leaving the officer to infer it.

See PlanScope pricing: one free report, £50 per report, or Professional for unlimited reports. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.