Guidance

Appealing to the Planning Inspectorate: communicating electronically with us

Updated 11 January 2024

Applies to England

1. System availability

Our online facilities will usually be available 24 hours a day. We will sometimes need to take the system out of service for a while to implement upgrades. Wherever possible, we will do this outside of usual office hours.

2. System requirements

Before you start, you should ensure that you have the following system requirements:

• Adobe Acrobat (Version 9 or higher recommended)
• an internet browser (Internet Explorer/Chrome/Firefox recommended)
• an email account
• ensure that your internet browser has JavaScript enabled, which is usually the default setting
• ensure that the web address http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/ for the Planning Portal is NOT added to the IE proxy server exceptions - this is normally only applicable to corporate networks.

3. Guidelines for submitting documents

3.1 Acceptable file formats

PDF .pdf

Microsoft Word .doc or.docx

TIF .tif or .tiff

JPEG .jpg or .jpeg

PNG .png

ZIP .zip

3.2 File sizes

Documents submitted may be no bigger than 15mb each. It is your responsibility to keep your documents to a manageable size. If you have documents that are larger than this, you can try the following:

• break long documents into several files, but note the document naming conventions below
• try to use black and white wherever possible (unless submitting photographs)
• if submitting images, your software may have file/image compression facilities to make them smaller
• note scanned documents are usually bigger than non-scanned versions.

Provided you are using the acceptable file types above, you can use ZIP files to compress documents.

3.3 Security

Remove any document security and enable macros if necessary. Documents should not be password protected, they should not be formatted as ‘read only’ and printing should be enabled.

3.4 Copyright

Ensure you have the owner’s permission and have paid any copyright licence fee before sending in documents.

3.5 File names

• Ensure all documents have descriptive names, including the type of document you are sending for example, “Proposed plan 1 March 2014”
• Number appendices and submit them as separate documents ensuring that the first page includes the appendix number - name them to indicate what they form part of, and their sequence for example “Appeal statement Appendix 2 Traffic census”
• Use “Part 1”, “Part 2” and so on in the file name if you have split up a large document for example “Appeal statement in Appendix 1 Environmental Assessment Part 1 of 3”
• Include the required paper size in the document name for plans and drawings for example “Proposed plan A3 size 1 March 2014”
• Include scale bars on all plans and drawings
• Do not use a colon (‘:’) in any file names.

3.6 Scanning

Ensure documents are complete and legible and avoid scanning more than one document into a single file. Use black and white unless colour is essential.

3.7 Ordnance Survey

People may only scan an Ordnance Survey map if they:

• have an annual licence to make copies
• or have purchased a bulk copy arrangement
• or are using a local planning authority supplied map under the ‘map return scheme’ (for which a fee is normally payable at the local planning authority’s discretion)
• or have purchased the site-specific map for the purposes of attaching to a planning application, appeal or representation.

More information on map licensing is available on the Ordnance Survey website - https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/licensing.

3.8 Images

Send pictures, photographs, plans, maps or drawings as individual files. Avoid the use of bitmap images as they are very large.

3.9 Hyperlinks

• You should not use hyperlinks within documents you send to us - instead, you should download such documents yourself and attach them separately
• You should not use hyperlinks to a website page containing multiple documents or links.

3.10 Sending emails

If you send anything by email you should get an automatic acknowledgement, provided it is sent to appeals@planninginspectorate.gov.uk or to a team email address (which can be found at the top of letters from us about the appeal). If you do not get an automatic acknowledgement, then you should contact us. For any correspondence which you send to us via email, you should:

• Quote the appeal reference and/or appellant’s name, site address and local planning authority name in the subject line or in the body of your email
• If you are attaching more than one document, please list them in the covering email
• If you are sending a series of emails, include “1 of 5”, “2 of 5” and so on in the subject line of the email, so we know how many to expect and can check with you if any appear to be missing.

Interested parties wishing to make comments on current appeals must use our search facility when submitting their representations.

3.11 Formatting

You should ensure that you number all pages accordingly.