Enforcement webinar outlines best practice and improvements to casework timeframes
The Planning Inspectorate recently hosted a webinar focusing on best practice in enforcement appeals, drawing more than 570 attendees, predominantly from local planning authorities across the country.
Improving enforcement appeals timeframes
During the webinar, Claire Sherratt, Professional and Operations Lead at the Planning Inspectorate, outlined the progress made in reducing timeframes for enforcement appeals, particularly those proceeding by hearings and inquiries.
“We’ve made significant improvements to the time it takes to process enforcement appeals proceeding by hearings and inquiries,” she explained.
When the Planning Inspectorate receives an enforcement appeal now, an inspector is appointed at the outset. For inquiries, event dates are fixed for 17-20 weeks ahead, with a case management conference around week 8 to discuss procedural matters. For hearings, event dates are typically set 13-16 weeks ahead.
However, Claire acknowledged the ongoing challenge with written representation appeals, noting approximately 3,500 open cases in the system, with 35% over 52 weeks old.*
“We’re taking decisive action to address this backlog,” Claire explained. “Our aim is to have closed enough of the older cases that only a small percentage remain over 52 weeks by the end of March 2026.”
The Inspectorate is implementing several measures to tackle the backlog, including:
- no longer automatically linking planning and enforcement appeals, helping to concentrate on older cases
- exploring ways to allocate cases to inspectors differently based on the grounds raised in appeals
- prioritising the oldest cases first
Enforcement appeals best practice
The webinar also provided comprehensive guidance on enforcement notice requirements and appeals. Inspector Managers Jeanie Russell and John Murray shared practical advice, including:
- the importance of correctly identifying the boundaries of the land in an enforcement notice
- ensuring notice requirements match the allegations
- understanding the grounds of appeal and how they are considered
- the concept of planning units, and when they are relevant to enforcement action
- the differences between primary, incidental and mixed uses
- how to handle the time for compliance with enforcement notices
A key piece of advice for local authorities was to consider giving enough time before setting the effective date of an enforcement notice to allow for potential resolution through alternative schemes or conditions.
“An appeal should be the last resort,” Claire noted, encouraging ongoing discussions between parties to narrow the matters in dispute and produce statements of common ground where possible.
Watch: Best practice in enforcement appeals
The full webinar recording and presentation slides are available on the Planning Inspectorate webinars page.
Our next webinar on Local Plans is scheduled for September – subscribe to our alerts to receive early access to register.
*These figures were shared as part of a public discussion and reflect the latest internal management information available at the time. They are not official statistics.