Planning refused? Let us help you move forward.

No. It is a planning assessment. We are not solicitors and nothing in the document is legal advice. It is written to help you make a decision, and to brief a professional properly if you decide you need one.

No. We are not RTPI-chartered and we do not hold ourselves out as chartered town planners. You should know that before you buy.

What that does and does not mean: no qualification is required to prepare or lodge a planning appeal in England or Wales — the inquiry rules expressly allow an applicant to be represented by any person, and “planning consultant” is not a protected title. So the question is not whether we are allowed to do this. It is whether the work is any good. Read the sample and decide.

Where a case needs a chartered planner, the assessment says so, and tells you exactly what to brief them on — which is usually cheaper than having them work it out.

No, and be careful of anyone who says otherwise. What it does is tell you, on the evidence in your own file, which of the council’s reasons look weak and which look solid, and what the realistic routes forward are. Sometimes the honest answer is that there isn’t one worth the money, and the assessment will say so.

Roughly one in three. In the year to March 2026 the Planning Inspectorate allowed 32% of section 78 appeals — the kind brought against a refusal. The figure is the Inspectorate’s own. It is also the reason to look before you leap: the assessment exists to tell you, from your own file, whether your case looks like one of the one in three that succeed or the two in three that do not — before you spend months finding out the hard way.

An inspector. In England, one appointed by the Planning Inspectorate; in Wales, Planning and Environment Decisions Wales, on behalf of the Welsh Ministers. They decide on the planning merits, and they are not bound by anything in our assessment or by anything the council has said. Any view we give on prospects is a view, not a forecast.

In both England and Wales, twelve weeks from the date on the decision notice for a refused householder or minor commercial application, and six months for most others. The traps are that a conditional approval you want to challenge gets six months rather than twelve weeks, and that the clock runs from the date on the notice, not the date you opened it.

There are further wrinkles where an enforcement notice is involved, or where the council never determined the application at all. We check your deadline against the statutory rules for your application type and your country, and it goes on the first page. Do not rely on this paragraph for your own date — that is part of what you are paying us for.

It depends which country you are in, and this catches people out.

In Wales, the free resubmission still exists: one further application, within twelve months of the refusal, on the same site and for development of the same character, with no fee. In England it was abolished at the end of 2023, and a resubmission now costs the full fee.

Where it is available it is often the better route, and the assessment will tell you whether you qualify and what would need to change.

Yes. Most householder appeals are decided on the papers, there is no fee to appeal, and you do not need a representative. Where the assessment recommends an appeal it includes an appeal pack: which procedure applies to you, suggested wording for the reasons on the appeal form, the documents to upload, and a one-page brief for a consultant in case you decide to instruct one.

In England, if your application was made on or after 1 April 2026, the appeal is decided on what the council already had, and the reasons on the form are your whole case, so they are worth getting right. Where a case needs more than that — a hearing, contested technical evidence, or a costs claim worth making — the assessment says so. We do not lodge appeals or act for you.

The same form, without paying. We read your decision notice and email you a straight answer: whether yours is a case we can take, each reason for refusal as the notice puts it and what it relies on, the appeal deadline as we calculate it, and a link to book if you want the full assessment. You usually hear back within the hour, and always within one working day. No payment is taken and you are not committed to anything.

It costs little more than an automated odds report, but it reads your actual file: the decision notice, the officer’s report and the council’s own policies. It tells you why the application failed, what can be fixed and whether you need a consultant at all. A day of a consultant’s time costs many times this.

The price you pay is the one shown when you submit, and it does not change afterwards.

We read every submission before starting work. If it is outside what we do, or the file will not support a useful assessment, we refund you in full within one working day and tell you why. You are not charged for the intake check, and we would rather turn work away than write something thin.

No. We work from what is published and from what you send us. Nothing we do touches your application, your appeal, or any deadline. Where a document is not published but you are entitled to it, the assessment tells you how to request it and what to say — and you send it, in your own name.

Yes. That is partly the point. It is your document and you can share it with anyone advising you. The one thing you cannot do is resell it or publish it as your own.

Most are, and finding them is our job, not yours. Where a document is genuinely missing — and things like pre-application advice and internal correspondence usually are — the assessment works around it and tells you how to get hold of it, including through an information request where that is the route. Any gap that materially affects a conclusion is flagged in the document itself.

Not yet. They run separate planning systems with different appeal bodies, different deadlines and different fee rules. We would rather say no than guess at someone else’s jurisdiction with your money on the table.

You have a statutory 14-day right to cancel. Because the assessment is delivered in 2 working days, work has to begin inside that period, so the form asks you to confirm you want us to start now and that you understand the right ends once the assessment has been delivered in full.

Before that point you can cancel and everything you paid comes back — nothing is deducted for work already done. Separately, and regardless of any of that, if we decline your case at intake you get everything back. The detail is in the terms of engagement.

They are stored securely, used only to prepare your assessment, and deleted twelve months after delivery unless you ask us to keep them for longer. We do not sell or share them, and we do not use your case as a public example without asking you first — the sample on this page is published with the client’s permission and with every identifying detail removed. The privacy policy sets it out in full.