Corporate report

Planning Inspectorate Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25

Published 26 June 2025

Applies to England

For the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025

Presented to the House of Commons pursuant to Section 7 of the

Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000.

Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 26 June 2025

HC 1051

Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to:

Planning Inspectorate 
Temple Quay House 
2 The Square 
Temple Quay 
Bristol 
BS1 6PN 
Tel: 0303 444 5000

Press Enquiries: press.office@planninginspectorate.gov.uk

This publication is available in large print.

Preface

This document combines performance and financial data with analysis to help readers better understand our work. It covers the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

In line with our values of being open and fair, it is designed to support accountability and transparency, describing how we have used taxpayers’ money to deliver for our customers. To be accessible and understandable, the analysis is set out in three sections: our performance, accountability, and financial data.

The Performance report and analysis are divided into four sections:

• Performance Report - opening with an introduction from our Chief Executive and Chair of the Board, the Performance Report provides a review of our performance in 2024/25, including the challenges, successes and strategic risks.

• Introduction - sets out our organisation and the context in which we operate.

• Business Plan Performance - a closer look at the data and analysis of how we performed against our three ambitions.

• Our Performance - analysis of our operational performance, broken down by the services we provide. Our performance in terms of our people, environment and sustainability and finance is also covered.

The Accountability section covers our Chief Executive and Chair’s responsibilities to Parliament, the arrangements we have in place to discharge our public duties and the internal controls we have in place to comply with all required regulations. A remuneration and staff report sets out the pay and benefits received by the executive and non-executive Board members, disclosures on pay and pensions policies and details of staff numbers and costs.

The Financial statements outline our income and expenditure for the 2024/25 financial year.

A note on the data used in this report:

Data are accurate at the time they were drawn from administrative systems, but as we use live operational systems this data is subject to change. Revisions to previously published statistics are only made when changes in the data materially change interpretation of Planning Inspectorate performance, or when a substantial change to data is expected to move statistics of more than 5%. Corrections will always be made if computational errors are identified in previously published data.

This publication includes a change to how the number of homes allowed on appeal are counted. These figures are now presented as estimates, rounded to the nearest 1,000. The five years of data displayed in Graph 1 have been recalculated to use a consistent method across the time series.

You can view more Planning Inspectorate statistics and data, and read about our data sources, by visiting Statistics at Planning Inspectorate.

If you have questions about any of the statistics contained in this document, please email: statistics@planninginspectorate.gov.uk

Performance Report

This section opens with an introduction from our Chief Executive and Chair of the Board. It provides an overview of our performance in 2024/25 including our highlights, who we are and our performance against the Business Plan.

Chief Executive’s Introduction

This report marks the first year of our 2024–27 strategy—a shared commitment to deliver timely, high-quality and cost-effective decisions, recommendations and advice.

That mission depends on something deceptively simple: flow. For the planning system to work well, cases must move. When they don’t—when work gets stuck in backlog or drifts outside service standards— our ability to serve the public falters.

That’s why one of our key priorities this year has been clearing the backlog. And we’re on track. We began the year with 13,500 open appeal cases and ended with 12,184. That’s a meaningful step toward our goal of 8,500 open cases by March 2027—the level we know is necessary to meet our service standards sustainably.

This is not just a numbers story. It’s a people story. Our progress reflects the professionalism and determination of colleagues across the Planning Inspectorate, and the strength of engagement from partners throughout the system. We’ve kept delivery high while laying the foundations for the future: shifting to a service model that reflects the real journeys of users, investing in data and digital, and securing the resources we need to grow responsibly.

Our reputation is not built just on what we deliver, but how we deliver it. Openness, fairness and impartiality remain essential to every aspect of our work. This year’s work to increase our quality

assurance, performance on complaints, and the proportion of High Court challenges upheld, all demonstrate that we are not only maintaining, but actively strengthening those values. In a complex

system under pressure, it is this integrity that underpins confidence – in our decisions, our people, and our role in the planning system.

We’ve done all of this with an eye on the horizon. The government’s ambitions in this Parliament— to build 1.5 million new homes, consent to 150 major infrastructure projects, and achieve full local plan coverage—set a clear and stretching direction. Supporting that agenda will take more than throughput. It will take a planning system that flows, connects, and delivers with confidence.

This year has shown what’s possible when we align purpose with partnership. We’re not at the finish line, but we are moving, together, in the right direction.

Paul Morrison

Chief Executive Officer

Board Chair’s Introduction

The Inspectorate plays a crucial role in enabling the delivery of the homes, infrastructure, jobs, community assets, healthy and sustainable communities, and environments the country needs.

We are part of a wider delivery system, and the government could not have been clearer on their missions and priorities, and the need for us all to increase our pace, efficiency, and innovation to deliver them. The Inspectorate is up for this challenge and our strategic plan outlines the approaches we are using to do this whilst maintaining the quality our stakeholders expect from us. I am grateful to ministers for the interest they have shown in our work.

The Annual Report describes our relentless focus throughout 2024/2025 on performance improvement and its impact. Our work on the backlog of enforcement cases has seen us decide 25% more cases and introduce a faster timetable. I am particularly grateful to those local planning authorities who have been available to collaborate closely with colleagues at the inspectorate to ensure our new case work management systems work seamlessly with the householder appeals digital process. This will help all parties perform better, get things right first time, saving resources and speeding up the process. Colleagues have shared experience and knowledge through online sessions and social media events to help participants and parties engage more effectively.

Our customers’ experience drives our work to improve certainty and timeliness whilst maintaining quality and professionalism. This year we have improved our complaints process, reducing the complaints backlog by 87% and the enquiries backlog by 92%, ensuring we learn from complaints more swiftly. Complaints themselves have reduced from 14% of cases to under 5%. Stakeholders have been generous with their time and their experience of engaging with us, and the operation of the wider planning system. This has helped us enhance and shape our services and prepare for the future. I thank them for this.

This year the Inspectorate has worked collaboratively with government departments and stakeholders to implement the action plan for national infrastructure to make the system even faster and more efficient. We have met the target for each of the 17 decided projects. We have also advised on another 80 potential projects. Over the next two years we are expecting a significant increase in projects and are preparing for this.

Local plans can shape a local area for the future. This year we received more than in recent years, but less than required for full plan coverage. We are expecting an increase in submissions next year following an updated approach to local plan examinations, set out by the housing minister, providing clearer housing requirements for local plans, with further policy clarity to come. We are preparing for this.

We could not deliver without our dedicated and knowledgeable workforce. Like many organisations, recruiting, retaining and growing talent in a competitive market has required new approaches. This year we launched our three-year people plan and the PINS Way, which aims at enhancing the experience and performance of our individual and collective impact. We have improved our learning and development offer and have worked with the Cabinet Office to ensure we can recruit the increase in skilled staff we require for the coming years’ increased workload. I am proud that we have 35 apprentices within the Inspectorate and welcomed our third Boardroom Apprentice at the beginning of 2025. This year, our Gender Pay Gap reduced by 1%, but we are working with renewed effort on how to close this. We have seen powerful work undertaken by staff networks. I am pleased that we have continued to improve our Civil Service People Survey scores.

A key role for the Board is to ensure stewardship of public funds and the sustainable use of resources. This report illustrates the achievements from action on our environment plan with a clear focus on our own impact, as well as the wider planning system. Once again, our external auditors have given us an unqualified audit report. We also received a very positive report on our Board effectiveness. We are delivering on our productivity plan to ensure that in a time of very constrained public finances we deliver more with the resources we deploy. I am grateful for the challenge and support of both our internal and external auditors and for the demanding standards and strong support we receive from our sponsor department the Ministry of Homes, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). We continue to provide them with delivery experience to support their policy work.

My fellow non-executive directors have made an enormous contribution to the support and challenge the Board offers. The work of our Audit and Risk Assurance Committee has been critical in managing our risks and ensuring value for money, preparedness, and efficiency. As I enter the final year of my second term as Chair, I am proud of the organisation my successor will join. MHCLG will be launching the search for a new Chair this summer.

I am grateful to my colleagues, our partners, stakeholders, customers, peers, and Ministers who have collaborated with us this year on our drive to deliver and improve.

Trudi Elliott

Board Chair, Planning Inspectorate

2024/25 at a glance

We saw an increase to our capacity with the net addition of 47 people to the organisation, improving our ability to deliver more decisions and recommendations.

28,000 homes (approximately) approved during 2024/25 due to appeal, which would not have been built originally.

In the past five years, our inspectors have granted planning permission for 115,000 homes after councils refused permission or failed to make a decision. These account for 7% or approximately 1 out of every 13 new homes.

We worked with 144 local planning authorities through the Householder Appeal Service pilot, unlocking new functionality for the entire appeals process.

25% more appeals were decided this year than in 2023/24 for tree preservation orders, high hedges and hedgerows.

We examined 44 local plans, with 22 found sound, ensuring that the proposals meet the future needs of citizens and business and giving security to local areas planning their development.

We provided 17 national infrastructure applications recommendations to Secretaries of State, and gave advice to 80 pre- application NSIPs, which provide our communities with roads, railways, reservoirs and electricity.

Introduction

Our purpose is to maintain a fair planning system, support significant infrastructure development and help communities shape where they live.

Who are we and what do we do?

The Planning Inspectorate is an executive agency of the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG). We are responsible for making decisions and providing recommendations on a range of planning-related issues across England (and a smaller range of issues across Wales). We make decisions and recommendations across our five public services: national infrastructure, examinations, appeals, rights of way and common land and applications. We employ a large cohort of planning specialists and work alongside other parties to support the development of the wider planning sector.

Our contribution

Across England (and Wales for national infrastructure), our independent inspectors decide cases and make recommendations in an open, fair and impartial way. This means they consider the evidence, make sure everyone can respond to the evidence of others and keep an open mind without prejudging one view over another.

To do this, we make sure development is carefully considered, the infrastructure the country needs is supported, the right homes are constructed in the right places, and that green spaces are protected. We have specialist experts able to advise and decide cases on a wide range of architectural, environmental, ecological, engineering, heritage, public access and tree matters.

England operates a plan-led system where policies in local plans, produced by local planning authorities (usually local councils), are used to decide how much land should be set aside to build new developments, such as homes, offices, factories and shops, usually over a period of 10 to 15 years. They also show areas where it has been decided that development should be limited. These local plans are used to make decisions on planning applications for individual development proposals. We examine these local plans, which set the framework of economic, social and environmental priorities for local authorities, ensuring that the proposals meet citizens’ and business future needs.

Against this foundation, local planning authorities make decisions on individual planning applications. The Inspectorate’s appeals service provides citizens and developers with a right to appeals these decisions, reconsidering each case in a fair, open and impartial way. We uphold and promote quality and fairness, providing crucial checks and balances for the planning system.

Alongside these services the Inspectorate makes recommendations to government on significant infrastructure development proposals. We make sure that these proposals meet the future needs of our society, balancing economic growth and environmental considerations, and ensuring that the community’s views on large infrastructure applications are heard. In so doing, we pave the way for vital transport, electricity and other crucial infrastructure rapidly to be built.

The work of our inspectors is supported by skilled professionals delivering casework support, specialist advice, customer service, corporate services, knowledge management, project management and digital expertise.

There are five Acts of Parliament which are particularly significant for our work:

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004

Covers the local plans system, as well as the statutory duty on decision-makers to determine planning applications and appeals ‘…in accordance with the [development] plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.’

The Town and Country Planning Act 1990

Includes the right of appeal for planning, enforcement, and lawful development certificate cases, as well as our ability to determine the procedure for a variety of case types.

The Planning Act 2008

Sets out the consenting regime for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), and powers relating to other parts of the planning system.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023

This covers a wide range of planning related matters. Some provisions have come into force (such as those relating to NSIPs), but many others are awaiting secondary legislation before they can commence.

There is more legislation affecting other areas of our work, such as for listed buildings, rights of way and environmental appeals and measures to underpin technology changes in energy and protection of the marine environment.

The Energy Act 2023

This received Royal Assent in October 2023 and aims to transform the UK’s energy system and support its transition to a low-carbon economy. The Act brings in changes and initiatives that will greatly affect the energy industry, the people involved in it, consumers, and the environment.

The rules and regulations

Sitting underneath the Acts, secondary legislation provides the detail to the statutory framework. For example, it defines what development can take place without seeking planning permission. It also sets out how to make planning applications and appeals and how they should be considered.

Our statutory duties

The statutory framework ensures the fair operation of the planning system. But we also carry out other statutory duties, such as those under the UK General Data Protection Regulation or the Public Sector Equality Duty. When doing so we must ensure that the parties involved in our casework are meeting their own obligations.

Planning reform

On 11 March 2025 the government published a Planning and Infrastructure Bill. We will closely monitor the Bill’s progress, as well as the government’s ambitions for planning reform in general, so as to be ready for when any changes take effect.

How we work

We have a long history of living by our values of openness, fairness and impartiality. Our roots stretch back to the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909 and the birth of the UK planning system. For over a century we have upheld and promoted quality, assuring the checks and balances of the planning system; our decisions and recommendations have made a profound difference to the country we live in. We take this privilege, and its associated responsibility, as seriously as ever. Our values shape our culture and ways of working and guide us in delivering a responsive and improvement-focused customer service. They define our strategic approach, are integral to our daily operations and help us to attract and retain the right people. Our headquarters are in Bristol and we employ in the region of 950 staff. Around half of these are home-based inspectors, all of whom are professionally qualified (for example town planners, architects, lawyers or engineers). We offer a hybrid working environment for our support staff, who carry out a wide range of functions from supporting casework to the running of the organisation.

How we engage with our customers

We strive to achieve a great customer experience through a range of advice and support channels:

• Website, articles, customer service

• Systems, applications

• Case officers, updates, process information

• Decision, user experience, next steps FAQs

• Quality assurance

• Customer service

• Customer feedback and failure demand

Our Strategy 2024-2027

Our 2024-2027 Strategic Plan was launched in 2024. It sets out our mission and ambitions for the next three years.

At the heart of the strategy is a relentless focus on the things our users want us to do: provide consistently timely and high-quality decisions, recommendations and advice. The plan has a clear focus but expansive look. It builds on the progress we have made, the excellence of our people and the strength of our relationship across the planning system.

By 2027 we will have:

• Delivered NSIP services in line with new timescales and requirements.

• Implemented a programme of work with local planning authorities which sees more planning decisions determined at a local level.

• Seen a reduction in the amount of new evidence submitted at appeal for inspectors to consider.

• Developed our GOV.UK and back office case management services for the submission and management of all appeals and application casework, evidence and communications.

• Increased our productivity and reduced the unit cost of our decisions.

• Explored options to amend our pay and reward frameworks.

• Standardised and better categorised our appeals data to enable more forensic examination of appeal types and trends.

• Improved our Inspector Development Programme to build the expertise of our staff to deliver our services more consistently and efficiently.

• Met our performance targets for all casework areas in a consistent timely manner.

• Worked in partnership with government departments and agencies to help design and advise on the delivery of policy ambitions relevant to our activities.

• Reduced the environmental impact of our casework and processes.

Business Plan Performance

In our 2024/25 Business Plan we committed to delivering against the mission and ambitions of our Strategic Plan. Here we set out in detail the progress we made.

The 2024/25 Business Plan launched a programme of work to drive up the productivity of the organisation and the efficiency of our casework delivery. Our sponsoring department, MHCLG, has set a list of ministerial performance measures against which we are assessed, including the target of issuing appeals decisions by written representation within 16-20 weeks and appeals decision by hearings and inquiries within 20-26 weeks. Significant improvement has been made across a range of our casework and performance measures, but there is still much work to do before we can claim to have achieved the targets set out in our strategy.

Success Measures/Workstreams	29
Fully achieved	19
Partially achieved	8
Missed	2

Timeliness

Performance in 2025…

• As of end March 2025, we took an average of 25 weeks (median) to decide a written representation appeal compared to an average of 28 weeks (median) as of end March 2024 and our year-end target of 24-26 weeks (median). Although this is improving, we have further to go before all these cases are decided within 20 weeks.

• As of end March 2025, we took an average of 27 weeks (median) to decide a hearing appeal compared to 32 weeks (median) as of end March 2024 and our year-end target of 28 weeks (median). We have made significant progress towards meeting the ministerial timeliness measure.

• As of end March 2025, we took an average of 27 weeks (median) to decide an inquiry appeal compared to 47 weeks (median) as of end March 2024 and our year-end target of 36 weeks (median). We have made significant progress towards meeting the ministerial timeliness measure.

• As of end March 2025, we had approximately 5,347 open cases which had been with the Inspectorate for longer than 20 weeks (or 26 weeks for hearings and inquiries), which is higher than 4,621 as of end March 2024 and our year- end target of 3,700. Some of this rise in overdue cases can be attributed to a rise in overdue enforcement appeals, where a backlog built up whilst we were focusing on other casework. But this performance must be balanced against our strong progress in reducing the overall number of open cases on our systems, which fell from 13,219 as of end March 2024 to 12,086 as of end March 2025, and leaves us in a much improved position for meeting timeliness targets in the coming year and beyond.

• As of end March 2025, we took on average 117 days to examine a local plan, compared to 134 days in 2023/24. We will need to continue to make progress in this area to meet the government’s requirements for faster delivery of local plans in the coming years.

• As of end March 2025, we submitted our recommendations to Secretary of State before or within the statutory deadline of nine months from the preliminary meeting for all NSIP applications.

Quality

Performance in 2025…

• At the start of 2024/25, we began a new approach to testing the quality of our appeal decisions, introducing a new system based on inspector managers reading issued appeals. This approach confirms that the overall quality of our decisions remains high and provides valuable insights to identify and address common errors and to inform our advice, training and development.

• As of end March 2025, we upheld an average of 1.06% of customer complaints when compared against number of appeals cases decided, which is an improvement on our 2023/24 position of 1.6% and our target of 2%.

• As of end March 2025, we received an average of 5.67% of customer complaints when compared against number of appeals cases decided, which is an improvement on our 2023/24 position of 9.4% and our target of 8%.

• As of end March 2025, the average proportion of High Court challenges found in favour of the Inspectorate was 66%, which is similar to 2023/24.

Cost-effectiveness

Performance in 2025…

• The 2024/25 tracking of the unit cost of our casework showed that we have maintained our position towards being more cost-effective.

Business Plan Delivery

• In 2024/25, we completed 10 out of 22 workstreams that we set out to deliver in the Business Plan. The remaining workstreams will continue into the 2025/26 Business Plan year either as reformed/next stage workstreams or as service level activities.

• Key achievements delivered in 2024/25 were:

  • We rolled out a new end-to-end householder appeals service process to 5 local planning authorities, leading to a simplified process and reduction in decision times for the appellant. See ‘Case study: Appeals service’.

  • We received ministerial approval for expansion of the streamlined process for householder appeals to other appeal types and commenced work on legislative changes and implementation.

  • We implemented actions from the NSIP Reform Action Plan including, launching a chargeable pre-application service which recovers costs from applicants. See ‘Case study: Applications service’.

  • We delivered improvements to our Learning and Development processes, including the launch of a core induction package, and a line managers hub, which included line manager standards and induction.

  • We prepared and developed systems to support new ‘Crown Development’ casework for implementation in May 2025.

  • We implemented changes to our Operational Data Warehouse and new casework and management information, leading to improved casework planning.

• Across the workstreams, 14 benefits have already been achieved with a further 45 on target for future realisation. Benefits predominantly support productivity improvement, financial savings and customer/staff engagement.

Our Business Plan 2025/26

Our 2025/26 Business Plan covers the second year of our Strategic Plan. The plan describes how the Inspectorate will be supporting the delivery of the government’s milestones set out in the ‘Plan for Change’, namely the delivery of 1.5m houses, 150 Development Consent Orders and up-to-date local plan coverage, whilst maintaining our focus on our mission to provide consistently timely, high- quality and cost-effective decisions, recommendations and advice.

Our Performance

In 2024/25, following the pivot to our 2024-27 Strategic Plan, we have been systematically removing backlogs to ensure that we meet our March 2027 casework targets. Therefore, we continued to focus on maintaining our performance in casework areas where our decisions are timely and meet quality standards, and reducing the number of undecided older cases in other casework areas.

In the early 2020s, we received more casework than we could decide. We prioritised and focused our resources on dealing with casework with the greatest individual potential for economic impact and community interest, such as:

• Local plans, which provide certainty for short- and long-term investment across the country

• Infrastructure, such as energy generation, transport, ports, reservoirs, water pipelines and waste disposal, which are essential for the country to function

• Appeals requiring a hearing or inquiry, which are generally those which have the greatest community interest and greatest potential to provide homes, jobs and community facilities

• Secretary of State work critical for public services, including High Speed 2 casework, drought orders and permits to keep water supplies going, compulsory purchase orders, and planning applications in areas where the Secretary of State removed some local powers due to poor performance.

By 2023/24, we had reduced casework in those priority casework areas and started focusing on other casework areas, especially planning appeals being considered by an exchange of written evidence. We needed to reduce the number of undecided cases by around three thousand, by increasing the number of decisions and deciding thousands of appeals already older than 20 weeks. We also adopted a faster timetable for enforcement inquiry appeals, reflecting the timetable we previously adopted for planning appeals decided after a hearing or inquiry.

In 2024/25, we continued this focus on reducing the number of open planning appeals considered by an exchange of written evidence and reducing older cases. We also added enforcement appeals by inquiry and hearing to that focus and expanded the faster timetable to enforcement appeals by hearing.

We continued to invest in the technological foundations which provide the opportunity for process efficiencies and experiential service improvements. These tools will provide the digital public services our customers and employees expect and need, which cannot be achieved with our legacy software systems. We are working closely with MHCLG to ensure our new digital services align with the wider ambitions for the digitalisation of the planning system.

We also started to focus more on improving our productivity. For instance: our digital services include increased automation, where possible; we have been exploring using artificial intelligence to support semi-automated redaction of sensitive content in online evidence; and we started trialling shorter decisions for some appeals.

We are determined for the improvements in our performance to continue, and ministers have provided resources to support this work. In 2025/26, we have been able to secure increases to our Resource Delivery budget (to £97.9m), which will primarily be invested in additional inspectors and digital staff to deliver the extra demands being placed on the Inspectorate, and a Capital Budget of £15.0m, which will primarily be invested in our digital Core Services (Appeals) and NSIP Reform programmes.

The section below sets out the analysis of our operational performance throughout 2024/25. It begins with a case study, spotlighting the work of our customer team, which is integral to our core value of providing excellent customer service. Following this, we take an in-depth view of three of our core services: local plan examinations, appeals and infrastructure applications.

The analysis of our operational performance is supported by performance data. More details on the technical definitions underpinning these measures can be found in our regular statistical releases.

Case study: Delivering excellent customer service

Being customer-focused is a core value of the Inspectorate. We serve a varied group of customers across our examinations, appeals and applications services, including local residents, businesses, developers, landowners, communities, special interest groups, planning agents, local planning authorities and government departments. Customer service underpins how we deliver our services to this varied group: from inspectors issuing decisions and advice, to case officers providing information about a customer’s case as it progresses. We therefore recognise the importance of reviewing our customer feedback, analysing this and proactively making changes to address the key issues.

Through this process, three key areas were constantly called out by customers: delayed responses, difficulty reaching the Inspectorate, and wanting clarity on our process. As a result, we changed our web form to create an easy and quick click-though mechanism, enabling the customer to contact us with simplicity and ease, providing a self-serve solution. The web form enabled customers to use drop-downs to easily tell us their issue, while simultaneously allowing us to route specific issues to subject matter experts within the team. This effort saw our channel of choice shift from 65% via email, to 67% via web form at the close of 2024/25. These changes have allowed us to optimise our service providing efficiency gains that have reduced our response times significantly. As we closed the financial year, all customer workstreams have achieved our customer promise service level of 80% within timescale, for the first time since pre-COVID.

We developed insight capacity and collaborated across the organisation to address common issues, friction and pain points from our customers. A monthly insight report was introduced, enabling informed decision-making that has since shaped elements of our new and current system, performance management and inspector training. This has contributed to complaints reducing by 20% on the previous year’s volume. We have also partnered with our professional leads to begin discovering how inspectors can be better equipped to understand customer expectations, creating customer shadow opportunities to gain first-hand perspectives for our inspector colleagues. There are now discovery plans in place to introduce customer-centric training as a standard protocol, with insight derived from actual customer feedback and interactions.

Moreover, to increase the quality of our overall experience, we have created the capability to build a framework that will encompass the entire customer journey, outlining areas of success and improvement. More importantly, the customer focus has seen a culture shift within the business and is being high considered in all aspects of innovation, improvement and standards.

This holistic approach transformed the team’s ability to manage workloads and address customer needs effectively, increasing customer satisfaction and trust. Customers are now more likely to feel that they are getting the right results from the Planning Inspectorate and be satisfied with the resolutions of their complaints or query. These results not only highlight an impressive operational achievement, but also a cultural shift towards prioritising customer satisfaction and service excellence. This journey serves as an inspiring model of what can be achieved through teamwork, innovation, and a relentless focus on the customer.

Supporting communities to plan for their future: Our Examinations Service

The places where people live and work significantly affect their lives and wellbeing. Councils, and some other organisations, produce local plans and other plans with their communities to identify how they will prepare for the future. We independently assess if these plans meet the legal, procedural and policy tests for them to be used.

This year, 44 local plans were received, and 22 reports were issued. The map below shows all the local plans submitted and the reports issued in 2024/25. The number of plans we received for examination began to rise sharply at the end of 2024 in response to government being clear that the proportion of the country covered by local plans needed to increase, so that the development and investment the country needs is properly planned.

In most cases, our local plan examination reports recommended changes to achieve a sound plan and to pass the legal tests. Sometimes this meant recommending removing policies or introducing new ones, amending the wording of a policy or changing a housing requirement. We worked pragmatically and constructively with all those involved to help achieve this, as required by successive governments.

On 31 July 2024, the minister instructed inspectors to adjust our approach and only use pragmatism where it is likely a plan is capable of being found sound. Consequently, where plans have been deficient and not easily fixed at examination, we have been advising local planning authorities of this so that they can decide whether they wish to withdraw the plan from examination.

In total, the number of local plans we received in 2024/25 was higher than in recent years, although still lower than the average number of plans we have received in previous years. This reflects the context of rapidly-evolving national policy on plan-making, which has now settled. The fall in local plans being submitted and examined has reduced our income from examinations work, but this has begun to change. Our 2023/24 Annual Report identified that examinations were taking longer to conclude.

We expect the number of local plan submissions to increase further, and for their content and evidence base to evolve as provisions set out in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act are implemented. In anticipation of these changes we have established a team to implement the necessary changes and trained five additional inspectors to lead local plan examinations. A much more significant inspector recruitment and upskilling drive is in train for 2025/26 to match the large volumes of local plans we are anticipating.

Case study: Examinations service

Dartford Local Plan

In December 2021, Dartford Borough Council submitted the Dartford Local Plan for examination. Dartford is bisected by the M25 Motorway and the A2, with the land to the north of the A2 having a predominantly urban character, including the town of Dartford itself, which contains around 70% of the borough’s population. Around half of the land within the borough is designated as Green Belt with most of the Green Belt to the south of the A2, interspersed with villages and hamlets. The population of Dartford Borough grew by around 29% between 2004 and 2020: the largest increase across Kent districts.

As submitted, the plan provided for 12,640 new homes based on a housing requirement of 790 dwellings each year. This was 40 dwellings each year above the level generated by the Standard Method for calculating the housing requirement at the time. The additional housing was based on the potential capacity of sites across the borough and would be capable of contributing to meeting wider housing needs in this part of Kent.

The proposed new housing was to be delivered on existing sites, principally within the urban area of Dartford and at the new community at Ebbsfleet Garden City, where significant development had already taken place as part of its long- term regeneration strategy. The plan proposed over 100,000 sqm of additional employment floorspace, taking advantage of land available close to the Ebbsfleet International rail station.

The inspector identified concerns with the approach towards some sites within the urban area of Dartford. The council was relying on them as part of its housing strategy, but the sites were not formally identified as allocations for development within the submitted plan. Further explanation was sought as to how these sites would be positively supported for housing development and Main Modifications to the Plan prepared to give these sites a formal status to support their delivery.

To meet the need for additional Gypsy and Traveller sites, the council proposed identifying new sites and regularising existing unauthorised pitches. However, the existing sites were all located within the Green Belt. The inspector identified that no assessment had been made to justify this in the Green Belt and the council was tasked with producing further evidence to justify the release of the sites. The additional evidence enabled the inspector to conclude that exceptional circumstances had been demonstrated to justify the release of these sites from the Green Belt and provide additional pitches to meet the identified needs.

Following receipt of additional information and following further specific hearing sessions, the inspector was able to identify Main Modifications to make the plan sound.

Following consultation on the Main Modifications in autumn 2023, and the receipt of the inspectors’ Report in January 2024, the plan was subsequently adopted by the council in April 2024.

Supporting a fair planning system through our Appeals Service

Our appeals service is critical to a fair planning system. Our inspectors are independent of councils, applicants and communities. They consider the available evidence with openness, fairness and impartiality.

Councils and some other organisations like National Park Authorities and Mayoral Development Corporations make decisions on a variety of matters in their area. You can find the relevant organisation for your area at www.planningportal.co.uk/find-your-local-planning-authority. The matters they decide include:

• applications for planning permission and to display advertisements, works to listed buildings, works to protected trees, applications to remove hedgerows in the countryside, and complaints about anti-social high hedges

• whether to serve legal notices (called “enforcement notices”) where they think harmful unauthorised development has taken place

• public rights of way, such as changing access rights to the network or making new public rights of way

• compulsory purchase orders, where some organisations can purchase land even if the owner does not want to sell. This is normally because the land is needed for an important project such as a road, railway or a development important for the area. We independently assess whether the compulsory purchase order should go ahead.

The Inspectorate is here if you want someone independent to re-consider these decisions, or to decide the case where they have taken too long. Our inspectors independently review the information and evidence and, in most cases, visit the site and nearby area before making their decision.

We are accountable to Parliament through the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, who monitors our appeals service performance through ministerial measures seeking us to:

• make our decision-making times faster and make decisions in a more consistent time range

• increase the proportion of appeals that are valid when submitted

• publish information about the number of cases we quality assure.

Appeals are decided through one or more of the following three approaches:

Written exchange of evidence

Most of our appeals are decided by inspectors after seeing written evidence and usually visiting the site. This is often called ‘written representations’. The appellant, the local planning authorities, local people, businesses and anyone else interested in the appeal make their comments in writing and the inspector decides the case after reviewing the evidence.

Hearing

For these types of appeal, the appellants, the local planning authorities, local people, businesses and anyone else interested in the case, make their comments in writing. The inspector then chairs a structured discussion around some or all the issues to help them test the evidence. These hearings generally finish in one day. Inspectors often visit the site as well, and then prepare their decision.

Inquiry

Inquiries are held for the most complex appeals and for some other casework, like compulsory purchase orders, and ‘called in’ planning applications, where the inspector make a recommendation to the Secretary of State rather than deciding the case themselves. The appellant or applicant, the local planning authorities, local people, businesses and anyone else interested in the case make their comments in writing. At the discretion of the inspector, people can also give their views verbally at the inquiry. Inquiries are more formal than hearings and evidence is tested by cross examination, normally by barristers representing the main parties interested in the appeal. After visiting the site, the inspector then makes their decision or recommendation.

In 2024/25:

Incoming work

We received around 14,703 planning appeals, which is our largest area of work. This is slightly lower than in 2023/24.

We received about 3.60% more enforcement appeals than in 2023/24, which follows successive years of increases. These cases are also typically more time consuming than simple householder appeals. We are now receiving more enforcement appeals than before the pandemic.

Other appeals include works to protected trees, community infrastructure levy notices, environmental, hedgerow regulation, anti-social behaviour high hedges, a range of casework relating to public rights of way and different types of compulsory purchase order. Of particular note amongst this casework in 2024/25, we decided 18 cases for compulsory purchase orders and 32 necessary electricity wayleaves during the year. These are procedures which can help important schemes go ahead, but can mean landowners are required to sell land or give access to the land even if they do not wish to. A landowner losing rights over their land is a very significant step, so these cases often involve inspectors hearing evidence on very sensitive and important issues.

Appeals received

Around 50% of the appeals we receive each year do not have all the information or evidence we need to be able to start work on the case. This means that consideration of the appeal is delayed whilst we wait for that information or evidence to be provided. The appeal is ‘invalid’ until we have everything we need. Appeals requiring hearings and inquiries are more likely to be invalid when they are first submitted. The new digital services we have developed are user-focused and support customers to submit the right information with their appeal the first time. They will be increasingly available for customers through 2025.

Allowed appeals

The overall proportion of appeals our inspectors allowed remained comparable with previous years. In the last year, three out of every ten appeals were allowed, meaning that the inspector’s decision permitted a development where the original decision did not. Across England in 2024/25, around 21,047 homes were granted planning permission on appeal. This is around a 26% increase compared to 2023/24, but remains significantly lower than the number in each of the previous three years as fewer homes were considered through the appeal process.

Graph 1 - Number of appeals allowed and number of homes granted permission

	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
Number of homes	24,000	30,000	30,000	24,000	28,000
Percentage of cases allowed	27%	31%	29%	29%	30%

What is a percentile?

If you arrange a group of numbers from the smallest to the largest, a percentile is a way of expressing where a value falls within that range of other values. For example, if we tell you the 25th percentile for decision times, then you know that 25% of decisions are issued in less time (or the same time) as that.

All our graphs show the following:

• 90th percentile

• 75th percentile

• 50th percentile

• 25th percentile

• 10th percentile

How long we took to decide appeals in 2024/25

Over time our ministers expect us to make decisions faster and in a more consistent time range. This helps provide certainty to our customers.

As in other years, in 2024/25 our decision times varied between different types of appeal. This was because the process to reach the decision is different. It was also because some appeal types (generally smaller development proposals) have a queue of appeals waiting for an inspector to be allocated to decide them, and these take longer than those where an inspector is allocated as soon as we receive the appeal (generally larger development proposals).

Planning appeals decided after a hearing or inquiry are now generally much faster than they were a few years ago. Since 2022/23 we have focused more of our inspectors on these more strategic case types to make these decisions faster. We also implemented a faster timetable for planning appeals to be decided by hearing which reflects the timetable used for inquiries and then also applied that to timetable to enforcement appeals by inquiry from early 2024 and to enforcement appeals by hearing from winter 2024. Since 2023/24, we have focused more inspectors onto planning appeals by written exchange of evidence to reduce the number of appeals waiting for a decision.

For planning appeals decided after an inquiry, we:

• decided 198 appeals, 15% fewer than in 2023/24

• received a comparable number of appeals requiring an inquiry

• continued progress to be more consistent in our decision times

• continued progress to decide more appeals within 26 weeks

• average decision times have improved over the last ten years.

Graph 2 - Median decision time for planning appeal cases decided by inquiry

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 100th Percentile
2020/21	24	28	40	53	67	275.14
2021/22	22	25	33	53	76	211
2022/23	21	25	31	41	64	154.71
2023/24	22	24	30	44	64	171
2024/25	21	24	27	34	48	191

For planning appeals decided after a hearing, we:

• decided 576 appeals, slightly more than 2023/24

• continued the progress from 2023/24 with speeding up these decisions and becoming more consistent in decision times

• in 2024/25, 72% of these appeals were decided within 26 weeks, compared to 57% in 2023/24 and 49% in 2022/23.

Graph 3 - Median decision time for planning appeal cases decided by hearing

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 100th Percentile
2020/21	22	30	42	51	65	135.86
2021/22	25	34	46	62	80	191
2022/23	18	24	44	67	105	226.71
2023/24	18	22	26	46	93	211

For planning appeals decided after written exchange of evidence, we:

• Decided slightly more appeals than 2023/24 and decided more than we received as we continued to focus on improving our performance for these appeals. The number of open appeals of this type fell by 1,591.

• The median decision time was comparable to 2023/24. Although we decided around 29% of cases in 20 weeks or fewer, continuing to decide and reduce the number of older cases means the average decision time was 29 weeks, compared to 30 weeks in 2023/24.

• Became more consistent in our decision times. The quickest 10% of decisions took 14 weeks or less, as in 2023/24. The slowest 10% of decisions took 40 weeks or more, compared to 52 weeks or more in 2023/24. The continued focus on reducing older cases puts us in a good position to improve our decision time consistency further in 2025/26.

Graph 4 - Median decision time for planning appeal cases decided by written representations

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time n weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks -100th Percentile
2020/21	13	16	22	29	38	157
2021/22	13	17	23	31	40	206
2022/23	13	19	26	37	49	270
2023/24	14	20	29	38	52	194
2024/25	14	19	26	33	40	141

For enforcement appeals decided after a hearing or inquiry, we:

• Decided 592 appeals, around 73% more than 2023/24, as we focused on reducing the number of both open cases and older cases. The number of appeals awaiting an inquiry reduced from a high of over 600 in 2020/21 to 325 in 2022/23, 244 in 2023/24 and 65 in 2024/25. In 2024/25 we reduced the number of enforcement appeals awaiting a hearing from 418 to 116.

• From October 2024 started running enforcement hearing appeals on a faster timetable, like planning appeals decided after a hearing or inquiry and enforcement appeals decided after an inquiry.

• Did not make our decision times more consistent as we continued to close long standing cases, and this 10% of cases continued to take much longer. The fastest 10% of inquiry decisions are getting faster compared to previous years because we progressed new appeals on a faster timetable.

Graph 5 - Median decision time for enforcement appeal cases decided by hearing

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 100th Percentile
2020/21	46	60	78	89	108	118
2021/22	39	46	62	75	106	197
2022/23	43	68	87	119	184	268
2023/24	24	44	80	102	134	220
2024/25	23	35	57	86	110	302

Graph 6 - Median decision time for enforcement appeal cases decided by inquiry

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 100th Percentile
2020/21	44	69	88	101	126	172
2021/22	44	64	91	118	137	196
2022/23	44	67	82	129	224	254
2023/24	24	44	80	102	134	220
2024/25	21	26	47	72	100	209

For enforcement appeals decided after written exchange of evidence, we:

• Decided 1,688 appeals. This was slightly lower than 2023/24 as we focused more on hearing and inquiry casework this year.

• Took slightly longer on average to decide appeals than 2023/24. For 2024/25 the median decision time was 54 weeks, the highest it has been for five years. Now we have improved performance in other casework areas, we have started to transfer more inspectors onto this casework to improve these decision times.

• Became slightly less consistent in our decision times as we focused on other casework. The quickest 10% of decisions took 25 weeks, whilst the slowest 10% took 99 weeks.

Graph 7 - Median decision time for enforcement appeal cases decided by written representations

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 100th Percentile
2020/21	19	24	33	44	60	241
2021/22	17	21	31	47	74	184
2022/23	20	29	46	70	88	249
2023/24	27	38	52	67	81	194
2024/25	25	36	55	80	96	171

For rights of way cases decided through written exchange, hearing or inquiry, we:

• decided 243 cases, slightly fewer than 2023/24 as we focused on other work

• became no less consistent in our decision times

• further reduced the number of undecided inquiry cases from 30 at the end of 2023/24 to 28 at the end of 2024/25.

Graph 8 - Median decision time for rights of way

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 100th Percentile
2020/21	27	41	54	69	84	121
2021/22	27	37	68	91	110	183
2022/23	33	39	64	92	130	209
2023/24	29	43	62	90	106	188
2024/25	29	39	60	80	105	152

For tree preservation order, high hedge and hedgerow appeals, we:

• Decided 25% more appeals than 2023/24 and closed more than we received. Our contracted inspectors started to work on this casework to increase the number of decisions we make.

• We became no less consistent in our decision times overall compared to 2023/24, but about half of decisions took slightly longer as we focused on other casework.

Graph 9 - Median decision time for tree preservation order, high hedge and hedgerow appeals

	Median decision time in weeks - 10th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 25th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 50th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 75th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 90th Percentile	Median decision time in weeks - 100th Percentile
2020/21	17	29	45	62	79	113
2021/22	12	15	22	36	90	149
2022/23	15	20	28	47	79	177
2023/24	17	24	37	57	84	163
2024/25	34	46	67	89	108	160

Case study: Appeals service

Our GOV.UK digital appeals service consists of a new beta website to replace the ageing Appeals Casework Portal (ACP) and a new casework management system used by our case officers and inspectors to replace the ageing and inflexible current software.

Since 2023, appellants in all local planning authorities have been able to choose to submit householder and planning appeals through either the beta GOV.UK website or the Appeals Casework Portal. In either case, the appeal form and related information is sent to our current case management software.

Our householder appeals service pilot

In September 2024 we started a pilot with the London Borough of Barnet. This was expanded in December 2024 to include a further four local planning authorities: Bromley, Greenwich, Havering and Richmond. In these trial areas, appellants must use the beta GOV.UK website to submit their householder appeals, which then go directly into our new case management software.

We have received 147 appeals to date through the pilot. The pilot has demonstrated for the first time seamless integration between the beta GOV.UK website and new case management software, whilst unlocking new functionality for the entire appeals process. These features include, but are not limited to:

• a portal for local planning authorities for questionnaire submission, managing multiple appeals, and highlighting of upcoming actions

• content improvements to the beta GOV.UK website so appeals are submitted correctly the first time, saving everyone time

• automated emails and the removal of manual letters and the need to cross-copy submissions between the appeal parties

• enhanced data collection, such as receiving the appeal form and questionnaire as data, and the recording of missing documents as data, opening opportunity for analysis and improvement of the service

• a simplified user interface for both internal and external users, which meets the latest inclusivity and accessibility standards.

Feedback

We have worked closely with the pilot local planning authorities and our employees to gather feedback, fix issues and make improvements.

The local planning authorities have been pleased with the simplicity of the system, with comments including:

• the “questionnaire really looks simplified”,
• there are a “lot less questions and things to go through”,
• there is “less information required to upload so find it really useful”.

Our case officers and managers have been equally positive, stating that:

• “The user interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making the entire process more streamlined and efficient.”
• “The appeal form is shortened and easier to read and makes the validation process easier.”
• there are “Fewer clicks”
• there is “No cross-copying required”

Inspectors have commented:

• “After finding things a little unsettling at first, as everything felt so different to the safe familiarity of our software, I can say that my experience so far has been positive. The new system is well laid out, logical and simple. It’s easy to use and move between different areas to quickly get the information I need to do my job.”
• “I like the way you can see everything clearly and drop down and close and you’re basically on the same page the whole time “
• “I really like the simplicity of it…  Just needs some tweaks.”

In March, we expanded the service to all planning appeals being available in the pilot areas, whether considered by written representations, hearing or inquiry. As well as these three procedure types, this includes new features such as the ability for third parties to comment, the ability for us to redact these comments, an appellant/ agent portal to keep track of their submissions, and the associated automated notifications for the additional stages of the full planning appeal process.

Once we have received sufficient feedback to be assured the system is working as expected, we will expand this to all local planning authorities during 2025.

We are also building all remaining appeal types that use the Appeals Casework Portal into the new service, as well as improving the service available in the pilot areas. This has built confidence with our stakeholders and reduces the risk for those users joining the service during 2025.

Driving economic growth and clean power through our Applications Service in England and Wales

Through our applications service, we consider the biggest infrastructure developments in the country, using government policy to examine them and recommend which should go ahead. We also make decisions for Secretaries of State on other applications. Whatever the application, our independent inspectors hear the views of communities, and act with openness, fairness and impartiality in reaching their recommendation or decision.

Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (England and Wales)

Our communities all use and rely on our nation’s infrastructure for:

• power stations and wind farms generating electricity

• major roads, railways, ports and airports moving people, food and other products around the country and between countries

• reservoirs providing fresh water from taps, and sewage treatment works processing waste water.

These are the largest and most complex development projects in the country, and they are critical to the nation’s future. They take years to develop. Certainty over the process and avoiding delays are important for everyone. Delays can lead to uncertainty for communities, infrastructure not being ready when needed, increased costs for the taxpayer and some projects no longer being financially viable. We provide advice throughout the application period, identifying where the projects need improvement or where more evidence is needed to explain them.

We consider the interests of developers, local authorities, local communities and other interested parties, whether it is consistent with government policy, and anything else that is relevant. We then recommend to the Secretary of State whether these projects should go ahead.

In 2024/25, we completed the work to accept all new applications within 28 days of receipt (a statutory requirement), as we have done in previous years. And we provided recommendations to a Secretary of State on 17 national infrastructure applications, all within statutory time frames. This is a comparable volume of work to what we have processed in the last few years.

As well as investment in transport infrastructure, England and Wales is seeing considerable growth in infrastructure proposals related to energy generation and distribution, and carbon capture. This means we need to have inspectors with expertise in all these areas.

In addition to making recommendations on 17 applications, we also provided advice on approximately 80 potential infrastructure projects. These projects are likely to become applications in the next few years. Our advice is aimed at making sure those applications are supported by the right information and address the issues likely to be considered when they are examined.

The Inspectorate charges for considering NSIP applications. Our income from NSIP applications increased from £11.5m in 2023/24 to £16.7m in 2024/25. £2.1m of this was from additional casework, £2.2m from the new NSIP pre-application service that was launched in October 2024 and £0.9m from inflationary fee increases (6.7% based on September 2023 CPI).

Improving the infrastructure consenting process

The current consenting process for national infrastructure was created in 2008. Throughout 2024/25 we continued to implement the cross-government action plan published on 23 February 2023. The action plan is intended to build resilience, trial faster models of consenting for some projects, remove delays in parts of the process and support the system to cope with the likely increase in projects.

Our supporting work included:

• implementing enhanced pre-application advice, including having an inspector involved in providing advice;

• fast track procedures for parts of the consenting process;

• implementing a charging regime for pre-application advice so our costs in this are no longer paid by the taxpayer; and

• making significant supporting updates to our advice and guidance.

Planning applications in Bristol, Chorley, Lewes, St Albans and Uttlesford Districts (England)

The Secretary of State has powers to designate local planning authorities where their performance falls below expected standards. Uttlesford District Council was designated in July 2022, the first time a council has been designated since 2013. Chorley Council was designated in December 2023. Bristol and St Albans were designated in March 2024. Lewes was designated in May 2024.

This means applicants in Chorley, Lewes and Uttlesford Districts can apply for planning permission directly to the Secretary of State where their application proposes ‘major development’, such as ten or more homes or development on a site over one hectare. We provide both advice to potential applicants and handle applications on behalf of the Secretary of State. Across the designated authorities:

• 6 requests for advice were received; and

• 8 applications for major development were received (and 10 decisions issued).

In Bristol and St Albans Districts it means applicants can apply for planning permission directly to the Secretary of State where their application proposes ‘non-major development’, such as one to ten homes or up to 1000sqm of commercial floorspace. We handle applications on behalf of the Secretary of State.

• 42 applications for non-major development were received (and 25 decisions issued).

The volume of major applications we received reduced by around 45% compared to 2023/24, but the growth in non-major applications was significant. Only three applications were received in 2023/24.

Common land and other applications (England)

We also decide other applications for government, including applications for work on common land and town and village greens. Common land has a long history based on ancient rights under British common law and remaining common land is now publicly accessible. About 3% of England is common land.

Many applications for works on Common Land can be small, but they are often vital to providing electricity or gas as essential services, for public safety or for local councils providing safe footways or public transport facilities. In 2024/25 we received slightly fewer applications than in 2023/24 and decided a comparable number of applications to that previous year. Average times for decisions were comparable.

Case study: Applications service

The Inspectorate has now implemented actions from the NSIP Reform Action Plan and has launched its new chargeable pre-application service. This service provides support to applicants as they prepare their applications for nationally significant infrastructure schemes and its positive impact is already being felt.

Driving improvement through proportionality and innovation

The former government’s NSIP Reform Action Plan was aimed at speeding up the planning process for nationally significant infrastructure projects. The Inspectorate continues to deliver on its actions from the plan, using new components including programme plans and principal areas of disagreement statements to facilitate examinations that are both focused and proportionate. Stakeholders have provided positive feedback on our commitment to shorter, more concise recommendations, with several recommendations issued ahead of the statutory six-month timeframe.

One notable success in adopting such a proportionate approach was the examination of the Rivenhall (Essex), Integrated Waste Management Facility and Energy Centre. By tailoring the process to the unique characteristics of the proposal, the operational team and Examining Authority efficiently managed the examination, which included just two virtual hearings and a limited number of written questions. This streamlined approach enabled the examination to conclude in fewer than four months (instead of six), with a comprehensive report finalised in just two months (instead of three) and a decision issued by the Secretary of State well within the three-month statutory period.

The Inspectorate also demonstrated innovation in its approach to the Gate Burton Energy Park project—a solar generation facility with battery storage and grid connection infrastructure in Lincolnshire. Early identification of overlapping applications for solar projects in the same region allowed the Inspectorate to devise a strategy for managing interrelated and cumulative impacts holistically, while maintaining the integrity of individual examinations. This initiative, supported by operational teams, introduced the use of a shared ‘Interrelationships Document,’ enabling effective coordination and minimising stakeholder burden. Gate Burton set the standard for this strategy, bringing efficiencies to overlapping examinations without compromising quality or process integrity.

Gate Burton – Order Limits Plan

Building on these successes, we are using internal fora to track issues across project types, maximising the efficiency of our examinations and enhancing the pre-application process. These efforts reflect our commitment to continuous improvement, ensuring that our services remain effective, adaptive, and customer focused.

Gate Burton Energy Park

Our People

We are fortunate to have highly engaged colleagues who are key to our success. Our ambition is that by March 2027, the Planning Inspectorate will be “an even better place to work, that values and builds the expertise of its workforce”.

People Strategy

This year we launched a three-year Strategic People Plan to set out the priorities and actions to deliver our ambition that by March 2027, the Planning Inspectorate will be ‘an even better place to work, that values and builds the expertise of its workforce’. Our Strategic People Plan aligns with the same five themes of the Civil Service Strategic People Plan (shown below).

• Learning, Skills and Capabilities

• Pay and Reward

• Employee Experience

• Recruitment, Retention and Talent

• High Performing HR Function

We are well on our way to achieving our ambition, which has been reflected in the rise of engagement scores for our People Survey.

Learning, Skills and Capabilities

We have continued to mature our learning organisation. This year we have introduced a new Learning and Development infrastructure, which has modernised our core learning offers, making them more accessible and relevant for our people. We have developed a suite of tools to build our line management capabilities, including launching a new line-manager resource hub and induction offer. We’ll be embedding this over the 2025/26 year as well as launching a new line manager development programme.

We have established a new Capability Framework which clearly sets out the capabilities that we need across our organisation. The framework is aligned to our values and provides individuals and their managers clarity to support development, performance discussions, and wider workforce planning.

We have continued to support 35 people through apprenticeship schemes, with 24 enrolling in 2024/25 which is higher than our forecast of 17. Approximately half of these apprentices are undertaking degree level or higher qualifications including the RTPI Apprentice Level 7 and Chartered Manager Level 6 courses.

From the 2024 Civil Service People Survey results we’ve seen an increase of engagement in our Learning and Development theme, including an increase of six percentage points in people saying they can access opportunities when required, and 80% of respondents saying that they are “learning on a regular basis from working with my colleagues”.

Pay and Reward

This year we applied the full flexibilities offered by the Civil Service Pay Remit process, which included offering all eligible colleagues an uplift of at least 4.26%. Our Pay and Reward Project, made up of representation from across the business, including each of our Trade Unions, concluded with the launch of our first Reward Strategy in early 2025.

Graph 10 – mean gender pay gap over five years

	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Gender pay gap	11.6%	13.1%	11.8%	14.6%	13.7%

Our most recent gender pay gap figure is 13.7% at the mean for 2024, down from 14.6% in 2023. We recognise that our gender pay gap is directly attributable to the high proportion (49%) of our workforce being in the planning professions which has traditionally been a male-orientated career. This professional demographic is reflected amongst our colleagues: whilst over half of the first inspector grade are now female, less than one third are female at the highest inspector grade. Another factor in the decrease in the gender pay gap between 2023 and 2024 is the changes to the appointments and structure of our Executive Team having, through fair, open and merit-based recruitment, made a number of female appointments to our senior team.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) plan and Reward Strategy recognise that we require long-term solutions to fully address our gender pay gap.

Employee Experience

We use a variety of communication channels to engage with our employees, providing them with updates, information on how they access resources and support and to gather feedback on their experiences to help identify any areas of concern. We work with three Trades Unions and a wide range of employee networks to hear the voice of the organisation, helping us shape initiatives and inform our decisions.

This year our employee engagement score rose two points and edged us even further above the Civil Service benchmark. In summer 2024 we ran an independent Colleague Experience Assessment for our operations colleagues to better understand their experience of working at the Inspectorate.

The results helped inform a number of activities, including the development and launch of ‘The PINS Way’; a simple charter outlining the core values, behaviours, and expectations that define our organisational culture.

‘The PINS Way’ elements comprise:

• Operate as one
• Network and engage
• Evolve and enrich through learning
• Put our customers at the heart of service delivery
• Invest in our success
• Nurture positive culture
• Spark curiosity

Graph 11 – EDI breakdown

	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Civil Service (31/03/2024)
Disabled staff	8.72%	8.37%	7.64%	8.14%	9.17%	16.90%
Staff from ethnic minorities (excluding white minorities)	5.03%	6.04%	6.14%	8.25%	7.48%	16.80%
Female staff	44.91%	45.22%	46.73%	48.21%	49.40%	54.50%
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and ‘other’ staff	3.75%	4.71%	4.65%	5.82%	5.45%	6.90%

We launched our three year EDI strategy with the specific aims to ‘better reflect the diverse communities we serve’ and ensure ‘all our colleagues feel included, valued, and respected’. The strategy pays due consideration to our customers and our commercial strategy as much it does our current and potential people and focuses on the foundational activities related to our responsibilities as individuals, leaders and as an organisation. Achievements in this area for our customers are the introduction of accessible online services for national infrastructure and more recently planning appeals. Our commercial strategy embeds EDI through ensuring Social Value is included in our processes and approaches to procurement.

The Inspectorate’s Employee Retention Lifecycle

Attraction

Raising awareness of the Inspectorate and the planning sector, and becoming an employer of choice.

Recruitment

Robust processes that support our diversity goals and the EDI actions outlined in the Inspectorate’s Strategic Plan.

Onboarding

Ensuring new colleagues feel welcome and supported, have the tools they need and understand our values, culture, expectations and EDI vision.

Development

Ensuring equal access to development and career progression opportunities, and that performance is evaluated fairly.

Retention

Ensuring colleagues remain engaged and connected to our organisation values and EDI vision and embedding inclusion throughout the Inspectorate.

Offboarding

Understanding why colleagues leave, so we can continue learning and improving as an organisation; ensuring they do so on good terms.

In addition we have been involved in schemes to encourage diversity and inclusion in our professions and future workforce including Springboard, Bristol Pride 2024, offering student placements and hosting several work experience opportunities. In partnership with our employee networks we also hosted a suite of events throughout National Inclusion Week 2024 designed to raise awareness and spark curiosity.

We have a comprehensive health and wellbeing offer tailored to the needs of our people, which includes ensuring staff have appropriate workplace adjustments to enable them to perform, supported by occupational health advice when required. This year we launched our new Health, Safety and Wellbeing Hub, providing colleagues and managers with easy access to up to date information ensuring their safe and productive working. We have made the world leading Headspace App available to all colleagues, implemented a new occupational health service, and continued to provide 24/7 access to an Employee Assistance Programme.

We have a Health, Safety and Wellbeing Committee that meets quarterly. The committee is chaired by the Chief People Officer and includes colleagues from our Trade Unions and representatives from across the organisation.

Recruitment, Retention and Talent

Average headcount of staff throughout 2024/25 (AA to Grade 6)

• 755 Operational Delivery Staff

  • 464 inspectors

  • 291 Caseworkers

• 211 Support staff

We have continued to recruit with a small increase overall in the headcount of the organisation with a rise from 951 in 2023/24 to 998 at the end of March 2025. Our turnover rate in 2024/24 was  7.49% which has seen a small decrease since 2023/24 which was 8.81%. Our success rate in filling vacancies in 2024/25 was 89% which was slightly lower than the 98% success rate in 2023/24. We have continued to utilise the online presence created previously and are using targeted advertising to improve attraction.

High Performing HR Function

The People Unit Operating Model review concluded in early 2025 and ensures that we have the HR expertise aligned and ready to continue to deliver our Strategic People Plan.

Environmental Performance

In running our organisation, we follow the requirements of the UK government’s legislation and policy which, in turn, contribute to the achievement of sustainable development.

The impact of our decisions and recommendations

When making our decisions and recommendations on appeals, applications, plans and other casework, we consider and implement legislation and policies prepared by local government and the UK government. Our role is not to develop policies on behalf of government.

Legislation and policies we consider and implement in our casework often include environmental matters. The significance of the decisions and recommendations inspectors make vary according to factors like the scale, complexity and location of the casework. In all cases full consideration is given to economic, social, and environmental objectives and the consequent impact each project would have.

The impact of our organisation

Our operating model, the way we undertake our work, also has an impact on the environment. Our people are split between office-based and home-based working. In both cases our organisation has a variable environmental impact through modes of transport, heating, lighting, waste and water usage.

In our 2024-27 Strategic Plan, we have committed two objectives to reducing our environmental impact. These are:

• Ambition One, Objective Four: We will reduce our organisational impact on the environment when delivering our casework.

• Ambition Three, Objective Five: We will enhance our approach to social value and reduce our environmental impact.

In June of 2024 we launched our Environmental Plan for 2024-27. The Plan is aligned to our Environmental Policy and sets activities against four priorities: reducing our emissions, effectively managing our waste, applying environmentally responsible and aware procurement methods, and being open and transparent about our environmental performance. The Environmental Plan includes the measures from the greening government commitments, as well as others, and is reported on quarterly.

In its first year we have made some good headway, with noticeable improvements in the reduction of our emissions by increasing the number of Ultra-Low Emission Vehicles (ULEV) vehicles utilised and reducing the kilometres travelled by car and train. We have also focused on reducing waste and seen a 33% decrease in our paper purchased. Finally we have made headway in increasing awareness internally by introducing Environmental Impact Assessments for both events and projects and providing a corporate introduction to our Environmental Plan.

Our office space

Background

We previously reported that we had temporarily moved into Engine Shed in central Bristol in September 2023 whilst our headquarters were being refurbished by the Government Property Agency (GPA). Works were planned to be concluded by GPA in October 2024 but due to the emergence of unforeseen challenges completion was delayed until March 2026.

In order to access the benefits of office working and to accommodate the increased numbers of colleagues working in the office, we took the decision to source a larger temporary office to better meet our needs. Following an extensive property search (including within the government estate), in July 2024 we procured a serviced office in central Bristol, occupying 8,965 square feet, and ended our lease in Engine Shed in September 2024.

We continued to proactively support the refurbishment of Temple Quay House and made plans for our return. However, in November 2024 GPA confirmed there was no longer sufficient space for the Inspectorate in Temple Quay House and notice was served on us to vacate, effective from 31 December 2024.

Latest position

We are currently occupying a fantastic office enabling collaboration, networking, learning and a positive culture. However, this office is temporary, and a permanent accommodation solution needs to be found. As our estates management was previously outsourced to GPA, in 2025/26 we are standing up a team with the required skills and experience to:

• define our longer-term office requirements

• seek spend control approvals from Cabinet Office

• procure and manage our longer-term office solution.

Delivering social value through our office provision

When procuring the larger temporary office space in Spring 2024, consideration of social value was a key factor in the evaluation of potential spaces. Our office provider is B Corp Certified and they are proud to be part of a movement that’s making a difference by meeting high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. Beyond this, their sustainability team continues their commitment to a more equitable and inclusive future.

Some of the highlights of how our larger temporary office space supports government with the delivery of its social value ambitions are shown below.

Our disclosure of greening government commitments data, as per the guidance, our Annual Report includes a full breakdown of data demonstrating our compliance with the greening government commitments. However due to the ongoing rental of our accommodation and a move to a larger office space in July 2024 has made it difficult to collect full and accurate data over the 2024/25 period. We will therefore not be disclosing the dataset in this report.

Tackling economic inequality

For supplier staff:

• All staff and contractors (including cleaners) are paid at the least a London Living Wage or Living Wage foundation wage if outside of London.

For Communities:

• Free event and meeting space given to local charities and community groups.

• All profits from on-site food and beverage sales donated to local charities.

For small businesses:

• Offices provide spaces supporting entrepreneurship and helping new organisations to grow, supporting economic growth and business creation.

Fighting climate change

The building has:

• C rated EPC.

• Smart thermostats and sensors.

• Recycling, construction/fit out waste minimised and minimal plastic waste.

• 100% renewable energy.

• Non-toxic cleaning products.

• Office close to public transport links including rail, bus, walking routes and cycle paths.

• Secure bike storage, as well as shower facilities.

Equal opportunity

For supplier staff:

• Commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion in their recruitment processes and training.

• Support local and minority owned businesses.

• Anonymous hiring processes to reduce bias in recruitment processes.

For supplier staff and occupiers:

• Events held to celebrate occasions and raise awareness i.e. black history month.

• Facilities accessible to all.

• Multi-use room for prayer, breast feeding and wellbeing.

Wellbeing

For supplier staff:

• Paid time off for volunteering for employees.

• Mental health days and support for employees.

• A range of employee benefits and perks that go above and beyond.

For supplier staff and occupiers:

• Events held to support wellbeing of staff and tenants.

• Quiet working zone for concentration and people sensitive to noise.

Travel

Inspectors are home-based, but their role requires them to visit sites around the country to ensure they fully understand the relevant economic, social, and environmental impact of the proposal they are considering. Staff also travelled for other official work purposes such as attending training events and meeting with external bodies.

Table 1 shows travel in 2024/25 via the corporate travel contracts, broken down by mode of transport. It does not show travel in personal vehicles, and we do not have a vehicle fleet. There were 118 domestic flights taken in 2024/25, compared to 106 in 2023/24. There were no international flights taken and 5% of cars hired were ULEV.

Table 1 - Travel via a corporate travel contract

Mode of transport	Car	Train	Air	Boat
Number of bookings	3,432	4,252	118	20
Miles travelled	1,395,687	1,604,036	70,982	-
Co2 emissions	429.64	56.85	7.76	-
% of travel Co2 emissions	86%	12%	2%	-

Supplies

We purchased 13,825 single use plastic items in 2024/25. Our single use plastic consumption is office supplies such as ballpoint pens and highlighters.

The volume of A4 paper purchased in 2024/25 (2,090 reams) was lower than in 2023/24 (3,552 reams). Our paper usage in 2024/25 is a 62% reduction on the 2017/18 baseline.

Graph 12 - progress made on reducing reducing paper since 2017/18

	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
Paper Reams	5500	4220	3470	600	2030	1805	3552	2090

Sustainable procurement

We are committed to delivering social value through our commercial activities and supply chains, based around the following themes from the government’s ‘Plan for Change’:

• Kick start economic growth.

• Make Britain a clean energy superpower.

• Take back our streets.

• Break down barriers to opportunity.

• Build an NHS fit for the future.

See the procurement policy note for more information on taking account of social value in the award of central government contracts.

Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures

In 2024/25 the Inspectorate has reported on climate-related financial disclosures consistent with HM Treasury’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) application guidance, which interprets and adapts the framework for the UK public sector. The framework places comply or explain obligations on in scope government departments in the following four areas: Governance, Risk, Strategy and Metrics and Targets. In 2024/25 we complied with the TCFD’s full requirements and disclosures in relation to Governance and Risk. Details on the latter are set out in the Risk section to this ARAA. In relation to the former, we strengthened our ARAC oversight of climate-related financial disclosures during the 2024/25 year, ensuring that all relevant information was routinely escalated to this Board sub-committee. In relation to Strategy, the requirement to explain or comply is not active until 2025/26. Nevertheless we partially met the requirements in this area, and will fully meet the requirements in 2025/26, during which period our corporate strategy is due to be refreshed. In relation to Metrics and Targets, we have partially met the requirements in this area but have been unable to fully comply with all recommended disclosures due to our current occupation of a rented office space, which means that we cannot access granular information on all of our organisation’s impacts.

The majority of the requirements set by the TCFD are met by our Environmental Plan for 2024- 27, which we launched this year. The Plan is aligned to our Environmental Policy and sets activities against four priorities: reducing our emissions, effectively managing our waste, applying environmentally responsible and aware procurement methods, and being open and transparent  about our environmental performance. Included in our policy is clearly defined measures and targets that we report on and share with the whole organisation including the Executive Team and Board.

Below are the details of our measure and targets for each priority:

Priority 1: Reducing our Emissions (Scope 3)

• Measure the Percentage of ULEV cars with the target of seeing this increase against the baseline 1.9 % for 2023/24. We met this target with 2024/25 seeing an increase in Q4 to 5%.

• Measure: Km Travelled by car with the target to see the average number of miles travelled by car to reduce against the Q4 2023/24 baseline of 536, seeing a successful reduction to 309 in Q4 2024/35.

• Measure train travel as an overall percentage of travel with the target of this increasing against the Q4 2023/24 baseline of 43% with a successful increase to 56%.

• Measure distance travelled by domestic flights with a target of reducing this against the 2023/23 baseline of 103 showing a small increase in flights to 118 for 2024/25. We will continue to focus on this next year and review how this message is delivered.

Priority 2: Effectively managing our waste – both of these have been covered in the ‘supplies’ section above.

• Measure the number of single use plastic items with a target of this decreasing against the 2023/24 baseline.

• Measure the number of reams of paper purchased with a target of reducing this against the 2023/24 baseline.

Priority 3: Applying environmentally responsible and aware procurement methods - this has been covered earlier under ‘Sustainable Procurement’

Priority 4: Being open and transparent about our environmental performance.

• To have a single source of environmental data and for this to be published to the organisation. Not only have we continued to publish this information on a quarterly basis we have ensured that:

  • all papers that go to the Executive Team and Board meetings require the authors to state whether the item in question has an environmental impact; and

  • Board have been provided visibility quarterly of the environmental plan performance.

• All in-person corporate events over 50 people to complete an environmental impact assessment, this is now being enforced across the business.

• All projects to complete an environmental impact assessment at design and again at completion stage, this is now being implemented as part of the project assessment and closure.

• Measure colleagues’ understanding of the Inspectorate’s environmental policies, this was delayed due to our pulse survey being delayed, but we will add this into the next pulse survey.

Whilst our Environmental Plan and Policies are shared with the message that this is everyone’s responsibility, there are no direct responsibilities placed on management roles in assessing climate related issues. Any concerns or issues that they have regards TCFD, they are aware of a single point of contact to raise this for discussion.

Case study: Working with Small and Medium Enterprises

In 2024, a procurement need was identified to replace our incumbent digital and data partner contract due for expiry. This contract provided the organisation with essential external skills and expertise needed to build great digital services for our customers and staff.

Given the scope and value of the contract, we identified the opportunity to ensure the contract was attractive and accessible to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We took positive action throughout the procurement lifecycle as summarised below:

Plan

From the outset of the procurement, we identified potential barriers for SMEs and took positive action to remove them within the legal frameworks. We took time to understand the market and considered the best route to take.

Define

We designed a procurement strategy and contract model that would encourage SMEs to tender. We defined the social value targets we wanted suppliers to achieve, gained meaningful buy-in from the organisation and held supplier engagement sessions.

Procure

We used the model forms provided in the chosen procurement framework that SMEs were familiar with. We kept bidding requirements straightforward and proportionate.

Manage

Contract performance will be managed through a balance scorecard where effectiveness of the contract and value for money will be monitored through collaboration and measurement of KPIs.

As a result of the action taken, we received 11 tenders and the winning supplier was an SME – Solirius. The contract was agreed in December 2024 and an effective relationship has been formed, with positive feedback provided by both the Inspectorate’s contract management team and Solirius’ team.

Financial Performance

In financial year 2024-25 the Planning Inspectorate spent a total of  £89.9m providing services to our customers and enabling delivery of the Strategic Plan.

This spend was made up of £78.6m Resource Expenditure including depreciation, £10.8m Capital and a £0.5m Annually Managed Expenditure credit.

We generated £22.3m of income from nationally significant infrastructure projects, local plans and other casework.

Resource DEL

Income

We generated £22.3m income in financial year 2024-25, an increase of £6.3m from the previous year. The increase was driven by £2.1m from an increase in NSIP casework, £2.2m from the new NSIP Pre-Application service that was launched in October 2024, £0.9m from inflationary fee increases, £0.8m from additional local plan work and £0.3m from other casework.

Graph 13 - Income received over the last five years (£m)

	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
Income	£12,046,000.00	£12,657,000.00	£12,016,000.00	£16,081,000.00	£22,321,476.92

Gross Expenditure

We spent £78.6m on revenue expenditure in financial year 2024/25, an increase of £4.5m from the previous year.

£4.1m of this was driven by inflation. £0.9m was spent on additional inspectors to help clear casework backlogs and prepare for new casework as detailed in the Strategic Plan. £1.5m was spent on additional Support Staff, primarily in Digital to improve the flow of casework through the Digital platforms. Recruitment of these additional support staff allowed us to reduce our contractor / agency staff spend by £0.7m.

Finally, depreciation increased by £1.2m due to the delivery of the new NSIP Applications portal and Knowledge Library in March 2024; and amendments for departing Temple Quay House as shown in Note 10.

Graph 14 - Resource expenditure over the last five years (£m)

	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
Staff Costs	£48,436,000.00	£45,446,000.00	£49,510,000.00	£58,641,000.00	£63,480,436.81
Non-pay running costs	£15,006,700.00	£15,270,000.00	£14,397,000.00	£15,350,000.00	£16,696,610.53

Capital DEL

Investment in capital projects totalled £10.8m in financial year 2024-25, this was an increase of £0.7m compared to the previous year. Key areas of investment were in Core Services £8.9m, our Operational Datawarehouse £0.9m, Crown Development £0.2m and the provision of Digital equipment (computers, mobile phones etc) for our staff.

Graph 15 - Capital funding over the last five years (£m)

	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
Capital investment	£4,251,000.00	£5,224,000.00	£9,620,000.00	£10,426,000.00	£10,808,425.25

Taxpayers’ Equity

Our taxpayers’ equity has increased by £12.1m from £33.2m to £45.3m. This increase is comparable with financial year 2023-24 and is due to continued investment in our digital service assets.

Paul Morrison, Chief Executive 20 June 2025

Accountability Report

This section covers our Chief Executive and Chief Officers’ responsibilities to Parliament, the arrangements we have in place to discharge our public duties and the internal controls we have in place to comply with all required regulations.

The remuneration and staff report sets out the pay and benefits received by the Chief Offices and Non-Executive Directors, disclosures on pay and pensions, policies and details of staff numbers and costs.

Statement of Accounting Officer’s Responsibilities

Under Section 7(2) of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000, HM Treasury has directed the Planning Inspectorate to prepare for each financial year a statement of accounts in the form and on the basis set out in the Accounts Direction.

The accounts are prepared on an accruals basis and must give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Inspectorate and of its income and expenditure, Statement of Financial Position and cash flows for the financial year.

In preparing the accounts, the Accounting Officer is required to comply with the requirements of the Government Financial Reporting Manual and in particular to:

• observe the Accounts Direction issued by HM Treasury, including the relevant accounting and disclosure requirements, and apply suitable accounting policies on a consistent basis;

• make judgements and estimates on a reasonable basis;

• state whether applicable accounting standards as set out in the Government Financial Reporting Manual have been followed, and disclose and explain any material departures in the financial statements;

• prepare the financial statements on a going concern basis; and

• confirm that the Annual Report and Accounts as a whole is fair, balanced and understandable and take personal responsibility for the Annual Report and Accounts and the judgements required for determining that it is fair, balanced and understandable.

The Departmental Accounting Officer at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has appointed the Chief Executive as Accounting Officer of the Planning Inspectorate. The responsibilities of an Accounting Officer, including responsibility for the propriety and regularity of the public finances for which the Accounting Officer is answerable, for keeping proper records and for safeguarding the Inspectorate’s assets, are set out in Managing Public Money published by the HM Treasury.

As the Accounting Officer, I have taken all the steps that I ought to have taken to make myself aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the Inspectorate’s auditors are aware of that information. So far as I am aware, there is no relevant audit information of which the auditors are unaware.

I confirm that the Annual Report and Accounts as a whole is fair, balanced and understandable and I take personal responsibility for the annual report and accounts and the judgements required for determining that it is fair, balanced and understandable.

Paul Morrison, Chief Executive 20 June 2025

Directors’ Report

The Planning Inspectorate is led by a group of Chief Officers and Non-Executive Directors.

Trudi Elliott was appointed on 1 April 2018 and reappointed (for four years) on 1 April 2022 as Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Board. Trudi is a Chartered Town Planner and was Chief Executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute until 2018.

Trudi attended six Boards, five Audit and Risk Assurance Committees, and two Remuneration Committees in 2024/25.

Emir Feisal was appointed on 1 October 2023 as a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee for four years. Emir is a  Chartered Accountant and a specialist in transformation change and essential resource planning, with the majority of his career spent at the Sunday Times as Associate Managing Editor.

Emir attended six Boards, five Audit and Risk Assurance Committees and one Remuneration Committee in 2024/25.

Oliver Munn was appointed on 1 October 2023 as a Non-Executive Director for three years. Oliver joined the UK Health Security Agency in March 2022 as Chief Operating Officer, later becoming the Director General Health Protection Operations in July 2022. He currently works for Faculty, a UK-based artificial intelligence company, as Director of AI Capability.

Oliver attended five Boards, four Audit and Risk Assurance Committees and three Remuneration Committees in 2024/25.

Adrian Penfold  was appointed on 1 October 2023 as a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Remuneration Committee for three years. Adrian joins the Inspectorate with an extensive background in planning and was a member of the Office for Place Board prior to the organisation’s disbandment in 2024.

Adrian attended six Boards, three Audit and Risk Assurance Committees, and three Remuneration Committees in 2024/25.

Baljit Dhillon joined as our third Boardroom Apprentice in January 2025. Baljit has led change, transformation and improvement across the public and charitable sectors over the last 30 years. She brings to the Inspectorate her specialist knowledge of workforce development with individuals and organisations.

Baljit attended two Boards, and one Audit and Risk Assurance Committees. She did not attend any Remuneration Committees

Paul Morrison - Chief Executive Officer was appointed on 14 December 2022. Paul joined the Inspectorate having held a range of leadership, operational and policy roles across several government departments.

Paul attended five Boards, two Audit and Risk Assurance Committees, and three Remuneration Committees in 2024/25.

Joanne Butcher - Chief Finance Officer was appointed in August 2023. Joanne is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy with significant years’ experience in finance and commercial.

Joanne attended five Boards and five Audit and Risk Assurance Committees in 2024/25.

Sean Canavan - Chief Strategy Officer was appointed on 1 April 2022. Sean is a Chartered Town Planner with over 30 years’ experience of planning in local government.

Sean was in attendance for four Board meetings and one Audit and Risk Assurance Committee in 2024/25.

Rachel Graham - Chief Digital and Information Officer was appointed in May 2022. Rachel is an experienced digital, data and analytical leader working in government for over 20 years.

Rachel was in attendance for six Boards and two Audit and Risk Assurance Committees in 2024/25

Graham Stallwood - Chief Operating Officer was appointed on 13 May 2019. Graham is a Chartered Planner with twenty years’ experience of planning in local government.

Graham was in attendance for five Boards and did not attend any Audit and Risk Assurance Committee meetings in 2024/25.

Richard Schofield - Chief Planning Inspector was appointed in May 2022. Richard is a Chartered Town Planner and the most senior planning inspector with over 10 years’ experience at the Inspectorate.

Richard was in attendance for four Board meetings and did not attend any Audit and Risk Assurance Committee meetings in 2024/25.

Members of the Planning Inspectorate Board who left in 2024/25

Madeleine Burch was appointed on 1 January 2024 through the Boardroom Apprentice scheme for one year. Madeleine is a Change and Improvement Manager at the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council. Madeleine attended one Board and one Audit and Risk Assurance Committee in 2024/25.

She did not attend any Remuneration Committees.

A Register of Interest for our current Non-Executive Directors and Chief Officers is published on the GOV.UK.

The corporate structure of our senior leadership.

Planning Inspectorate Board (Advisory) Non-Executive Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Officers, MHCLG

Remuneration Committee Non-Executive Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Chief People Officer

Audit and Risk Assurance Committee Non-Executive Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Finance Officer, Internal and External Audit, MHCLG

Accounting Officer Chief Executive Officer

Executive Team Chief Executive Officer, Executive Officers

• Quarterly Reviews

• Directorate Leadership Meetings

• Information Security Management Forum

• Senior Leadership Group

Governance Statement

The Planning Inspectorate is an arm’s length body sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG). Our governance arrangements are the controls we have in place to upheld our public duty with integrity.

Governance Statement

The Planning Inspectorate is an arm’s length body sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. Our governance arrangements are the controls we have in place to uphold our public duty with integrity.

This Governance Statement covers the period from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. Our Chief Executive and designated Accounting Officer, Paul Morrison, is accountable for ensuring the effectiveness of governance arrangements and of the management controls, including risk management and internal audits. He is personally responsible for the Inspectorate’s use of resources to carry out its functions and for managing the organisation in accordance with our Framework Document, with the Civil Service rules and best practice on propriety and value for money. He may be required to appear before the Public Accounts Committee in relation to his responsibilities as Accounting Officer. Paul was designated as Accounting Officer with effect from the 14 December 2022.

Paul is satisfied that he has the necessary level of assurance through rigorous review of the controls, especially risk management and audit findings, advice from the Board and the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee (ARAC), and through recommendations taken to the Executive Team.

Accounting Officer meetings are called by MHCLG and are chaired by the Director of Planning. The meetings hold our Accounting Officer to account for operational and financial performance and for compliance with the Framework Document that formalises the relationship between the Inspectorate and MHCLG. The meetings typically focus on progress against the annual Business Plan and the priorities set for the year by MHCLG. In 2024/25 seven Accounting Officer meetings took place.

Executive Team

The Executive Team is composed of all the Chief Officers and is chaired by the Chief Executive. Meeting fortnightly, this group sets out and delivers our strategy, monitors our financial and non-financial performance, mitigates and evaluates strategic risks and issues, manages our relationships with our people, key stakeholders and customers and gives direction to the Inspectorate.

In the last year Executive Team agendas primarily focused on the following issues: improving our performance, tracking of budgets, spending review submissions, strategic risk management, reporting structures and the development and implementation of a new service model. The remainder of the time focused on the following issues: our priorities to progress as an employer (with focus on HR specific policies, ways of working, office facilities and being an inclusive workplace), delivering through change (including preparation for additional casework and changes brought about by the implementation of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act) and driving digitalisation through our services. As standard, the Executive Team regularly reviews our media channels and customer and stakeholder interactions. A categorised breakdown of the Executive Team’s time in 2024/25 is in graph below.

Graph 16 - Breakdown of the Executives Team’s time

Decision Theme	Percentage of time spent on decision making
Governance	41%
Improving our performance	21%
Progressing as an employer	17%
Looking outwards	13%
Delivering through change	4%
Driving digitalisation	4%

Some of the key actions taken by the Executive Team in 2024/25 were:

• agreeing the service model approach and contracts empowering Service Owners to manage our services end to end, putting our users at the heart of the services;

• reviewing the corporate governance structure to support and align with the service model, including budget allocation, the production of a new balanced scorecard to monitor performance, productivity measures, quality assurance and unit costs;

• agreeing the Capability Framework and PINS Way to support development, performance and wider workforce planning;

• reviewing the innovation, AI adoption and knowledge management approaches, making sure we are exploring technology, capturing our knowledge resources and being innovative;

• agreeing our stakeholder engagement matrix, key messages and communications plans; and

• shaping and approving the Annual Report and Accounts.

Board

The Board is advisory. It aims to provide assurance to our sponsors about our progress in delivering our strategy through insight, challenge and support to the Executive Team.

Trudi Elliott is the independent Non-Executive Chair of the Board. Members include the other Non-Executive Directors, the Chief Executive and the Executive Team, and the Director of Planning from MHCLG.

In January 2025 as part of the Board Apprentice scheme, our third Boardroom Apprentice joined the Inspectorate Board and will be in post until December 2025.

The Board met six times in 2024/25. Attendance is shown in the Directors’ Report.

Every meeting included:

• an update from MHCLG on ministerial priorities;

• an update from the Inspectorate’s Chief Executive;

• a review of the Board level balanced scorecard, which includes data about operational performance across our wide range of work, the health, safety and wellbeing of our people, our financial position and delivery against our Business Plan; and

• a review of stakeholder engagement, customer interactions and performance against service level agreements.

A categorised breakdown of how the Board spent its time in 2024/25 is shown below.

Graph 17 - Breakdown of Board’s time

Decision Theme	Percentage of time spent on decision making
Governance	35%
Looking outwards	34%
Improving our performance	17%
Progressing as an employer	10%
Delivering through change	2%
Driving digitalisation	2%

Throughout the year, the Board focused on:

• the Strategic People plan;

• the spending review and budget;

• future preparedness and future strategy;

• the Inspectorate’s AI adoption plan;

• the new Service Model approach and governance;

• specific 2024/25 Business Plan workstreams, notably the systemising of inspector learning and development;

• 2025/26 business planning;

• closing the gender pay gap;

• shaping and approving the annual report and accounts;

• the annual Board effectiveness review and subsequent action plan; and

• deep dive sessions with specialist Inspectorate colleagues on the following topics: local plans, appeals, nationally significant infrastructure projects, the Board’s balanced scorecard, stakeholder engagement and the productivity improvement plan.

Remuneration Committee

The Remuneration Committee met three times during 2024/25. Attendance is shown in the Directors’ Report. The Chair of Remuneration Committee is Adrian Penfold.

The purpose of the Remuneration Committee is to decide on all aspects of remuneration for the Planning Inspectorate’s senior civil servants (SCS) in accordance with the annual Senior Civil Service Pay Guidance and with particular regard to equal opportunities and succession planning. The Remuneration Committee also provides a strategic steer on pay issues relating to the Inspectorate’s non-senior civil servants.

The Committee:

• discussed and made recommendations to MHCLG on Executive Team performance;

• received an update on the SCS pay remit and budget and non-SCS pay;

• reviewed and provided comments on 2024/25 Executive Team goals;

• discussed 2024/25 Executive Team mid-year performance against goals; and

• provided advice to MHCLG on the 2024/25 goals and performance of the Chief Executive

Audit and Risk Assurance Committee

ARAC is an advisory sub-committee of the Board. It aims to support the Board by providing insight, challenge and support on the effectiveness of the Inspectorate’s risk management framework, internal and external audit programmes, and management controls. This includes the integrity of financial reporting and the annual report and accounts.

The Chair of ARAC is Emir Feisal. The other two members are Non-Executive Directors Oliver Munn and Adrian Penfold. The meetings are also attended by a range of executives and experts, representatives of MHCLG, the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA).

The Committee met five times this year. Attendance is shown in the Directors’ Report. During the year, the Committee:

• reviewed the risk assurance process and internal controls, including the whistleblowing policy, complaint management, risk appetite, and fraud and bribery procedures;

• assessed how we identify and manage risks, both at a strategic and unit level, and assessed the risk appetite of the organisation;

• reviewed compliance with functional standards;

• monitored the robustness of the internal audit programme and resulting management actions;

• provided insight and challenge on the production of the annual report and accounts;

• escalated issues that the Committee thought would benefit from more focused discussions, such as mandatory training completion;

• reviewed the Accounting Officer’s assessment of the effectiveness of internal controls;

• reviewed the Committee’s own effectiveness, including whether the Accounting Officer was content with the assurances provided. All of the discussions were supported by quality papers and presentations; and

• held deep dive sessions on the following topics with specialist Inspectorate staff: Sustainability and the launch of the Environment Plan; Digital and Data including data quality; and the strategic people plan.

ARAC also considered the Inspectorate’s requirements under the recommendations set out by the Task Force for Climate Related Financial Disclosures, and the extent to which various aspects of our 2024-27 Environmental Plan meet these requirements.

A categorised breakdown of how ARAC spent its time in 2024/25 is shown below:

Graph 18 - Breakdown of ARAC’s time

Decision Theme	Percentage of time spent on decision making
Internal Controls	32%
Risk Management	27%
External Audits (NAO)	19%
Internal Audits (GIAA)	11%
Financial and Annual Reporting	11%

Effectiveness Review

The purpose of an effectiveness review is to ensure our governance is effective and our corporate governance meetings are responsive, inclusive and participatory with appropriate escalation routes in place. In 2024/25 the Chair of the Board commissioned independent expert Lesley Cowley to conduct an effectiveness review focussing on the progress made by the Board in responding to recommendations from the November 2023 review (also conducted by Lesley Cowley). Findings were reported to the Board in January 2024. The Board endorsed the report and its major and supporting recommendations. The major recommendations are:

• The Executive Team should draw upon relevant data sets to produce a strategic ‘Mind the Gap’ assessment of where the current and projected future gaps exist between the Inspectorate’s strategic and business plans and the Inspectorate’s resources, capacity and capabilities, particularly in terms of people resource. The ‘Mind the Gap’ assessment should be considered by the Board, potentially in a workshop format, with the aim of bringing the entire Board to the same level of understanding, jointly explore future scenarios and options and to consider the way forward. The Board should discuss and agree how they wish to monitor future progress.

• Performance reporting should be considered by the Board, potentially in a workshop format, with the aim of considering potential reporting formats and content, projected performance, trend analysis and agreeing upon the way forward. Deliberations should be informed by benchmarking Board reports provided to other arms length bodies or organisations who also have complex and variable volume operations.

• The MHCLG Sponsorship team should draw up a plan for the recruitment of the new Inspectorate’s Chair, with a timeline that starts in March 2025. Although the current Chair’s term does not end until March 2026, this timeline allows for a comprehensive handover with the current Chair and the potential for there to be a repeat process should the first recruitment round not produce sufficient appointable candidates. The plan should also include outreach and publicity to encourage applications from a wide range of diverse candidates.

• MHCLG and the Inspectorate should continue to enhance relationships and understanding at all levels. The Chief Executive and Sponsorship team lead should identify appropriate opportunities to build upon the progress made to date.

• The Board should be provided with a future stakeholder engagement plan that incorporates opportunities for individual board members, particularly Non-Executive Directors, to listen to and engage with stakeholders.

• The Board should be provided with a future staff engagement plan that incorporates opportunities for individual board members, particularly Non-Executive Directors, to listen and engage with staff.

At the time of writing, the majority of these actions are being progressed or have been completed.

Compliance with the Corporate Governance Code

Our governance arrangements are compliant with HM Treasury’s Code of Good Practice for Central Government Departments, with a few exceptions explained below.

The Corporate Governance Code assumes that an organisation’s Board has a decision making role, but our Board is advisory. Therefore some of the responsibilities the Code assigns to the Board are carried out by our Executive Team. Additionally, our Board Chair is not a minister but our lead Non- Executive Director, who reports to the Director of Planning at MHCLG.

Contrary to the Code we do not have a Nominations Committee for appointments. The Chair of the Board is involved in the recruitment process for Chief Officers, effectively carrying out the role of a committee. This is a proportionate arrangement given the size of our organisation and our Executive Team.

In June 2023 our Framework Agreement was formally approved by HM Treasury and in July 2023 was published by MHCLG on GOV.UK. The Agreement sets out the broad governance framework within which we and MHCLG operate. It defines:

• our core responsibilities;

• the governance and accountability processes that apply between MHCLG and us; and

• how the relationship works in practice, especially in relation to governance and financial matters.

Risk Report

Risk management facilitates us realising our Strategic Plan by identifying risks and issues, and understanding their materiality to inform decision making in pursuit of our ambitions. Our risk profile is brought to life by the backdrop of our ever-evolving environment, as we strive to both mitigate risks posing a threat and harness opportunities to act in our best interests.

Strategic risk management

We are proactive in the management of our strategic risks to fulfil our ambitions and meet our duty to achieve value for public money. Each strategic risk is owned by a member of the Executive Team and serves to facilitate the risk management process; identify, assess, monitor, review and report. All strategic risks have an agreed control environment and set of mitigating actions, to ensure our efforts move towards the direction of our desired outcome. Each risk is subject to assessment on a 5x5 likelihood and impact scale and assigned a risk appetite. The overall effectiveness of our risk management process and internal control is reviewed periodically by our Internal Audit service provided by the Government Internal Audit Agency.

For 2024/25, the following Venn diagram (Figure 1) shows each of our strategic risks (S followed by a number) mapped across the three ambitions within our Strategic Plan.

Where risks have potential to affect all three ambitions, they are placed in the centre, where the risk falls across of two ambitions, it will be placed in the triangle quadrant of those ambitions, and where a risk is exclusive to one ambition it is placed in the original/ primary colour.

Figure 1 - Venn diagram mapping our Strategic Risks

HM Orange Book - Comply or Explain

In November 2024, HM Treasury issued a revised Risk Control Framework to be applied across government. In a continued commitment to best practice, we launched our revised Corporate Risk Management suite in February 2025, consisting of a risk management framework, policy and strategy.

These core documents allow the Inspectorate to apply HM Treasury Orange Book government principles in practice, and to meet these requirements on a comply or explain basis. The risk framework sets out out operational governance, integration, collaboration, the risk management process, assurance and continual improvement. The framework includes assessment scales, appetite, tolerance and the respective roles and responsibilities across the organisation. This is supported by the accompanying policy and strategy, which serve to manage expectations and offer a set of objectives and a roadmap to achieving them.

Upon launching this new document suite, which includes the Inspectorate three lines of defence, we created a sustainable model for risk management for iterative development in the interest of government guidance. By establishing a clearly defined yet proportionate approach, this supports the effective management of the risks we face and instils confidence in the decisions we take as an organisation.

Our Risk Management Framework referenced above includes Governance as outlined within the HM Treasury Orange Book and as required by Phase 2 of the TCFD for the 24/25 year. Climate risk is considered at strategic level and included as an entry within the Strategic Risk Register, currently listed within the Operational Delivery risk category (S49, Figure 3 – Strategic Risk Profile by Category). This risk was identified in early 2025 as part of the Inspectorate’s need and interest to articulate climate risk, as per the inclusion within Figure 1 (Venn Diagram).

In doing so, the Inspectorate considered climate change as an over-arching risk with potential to impact our objectives, to be reflected across service-level registers across the organisation. This work will continue into 2025/26 to provide clarity on our aggregate risk position, relative significance and risk appetite. As part of this work, we will consider both the significance of emerging regulatory requirements and the size and scope of these risks in pursuit of our ambitions and objectives. Our aims for 2025/26 include supplying our position to MHCLG on an ongoing basis to support the aggregate risk position, and to further refine any newly identified climate-related risks within subsets of both transition and physical risks, in addition to any climate related opportunities.

The Risk Management Framework and process are adhered to as part of our overall approach to risk management, including treatment options to treat, tolerate, transfer or terminate risks on a cost-benefit analysis with the relevant risk owner/s. This may be within regular scheduled reviews across teams, or as a dedicated session within newly identified risks. Strategic reviews are subject to an annual schedule of risk reviews with Executive Team members. The strategic risk register is also reviewed on an annual basis to ensure materiality and treatment is appropriately monitored and addressed.

Figure 2 The Planning Inspectorate’s model for risk management

Our risk profile through 2024/25

Table 2 summarises the strategic risk profile for the Inspectorate and the changes over the past 12 months. This includes identification of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. These factors may impact on our existing risks and help us identify and categorise new risks.

Our risk profile at the end of 2024/25 shows that the scores for all our strategic risks remain between 8 and 16. The strategic risk scores have stabilised over the past year with limited movement throughout the year. In line with the series of deep dive reviews, there have been four instances of agreeing risks to close, in addition to six new risks being added. This reflects our ability to consistently and effectively respond to changes in our environment, whether these are internal or external in nature.

The risks subject to a full deep dive review are highlighted in teal on Table 2. The process for these reviews includes risk identification, controls and mitigations recapture, assessment of the Inherent, Current and Target scores and an appetite and tolerance setting. In 2025/26 a review of the Strategic register will be carried out to ensure the strategic risks continue to offer a reflective and accurate view of our risk profile. This will not negate a requirement for any further potential risks to be identified and added to the register as appropriate.

The additional six risks identified throughout this year provide an aggregated view from our tiered risk approach across all three levels of Strategic, Unit and Team level registers. This demonstrates the importance of cross-functional working and regular reviews to consider the relevance of context and effectiveness of mitigations, for continual improvement to our risk response.

Table 2 Strategic Profile by Category

Risk profile category	No movement	Deep dive review 2024/25	New risk for 2024/25
Financial
S37 Funding for establishment posts	Yes	No	No
S41 Budgetary constraints	No	No	Yes
S47 Implementation of SAP4HANA	No	No	Yes
Compliance, legal and regulatory
S11 Data protection	No	Yes	No
S35 Compliance with functional standards	Yes	No	No
S40 Fraud	Yes	No	No
S42 Bribery and anti-corruption (Financial and Contractual)	No	No	Yes
S44 Bribery and anti-corruption (Operations)	No	No	Yes
S45 Inability to meet environment and sustainability reporting	No	No	Yes
S46 GDPR information rights	No	No	Yes
Operational delivery
S18 Ability to react and be prepared for external change	Yes	No	No
S28 NI reform effect on performance, funding and reputation	Yes	No	No
S39 Cyber risk	No	Yes	No
S48 Failure to achieve 12-15% productivity uplift	No	No	Yes
S49 Climate change on operational delivery	No	No	Yes
People
S16 Health, safety and wellbeing	No	Yes	No
S21 Future skills	No	Yes	No
S33 Breakdown in confidence between staff and management	Yes	No	No
Reputation and credibility
S19 Our progress in improving services	Yes	No	No
S20 Long term operational model	Yes	No	No
S22 Value and quality of data	No	Yes	No
S25 Operational readiness for Levelling Up and Regeneration Act (LURA)	No	Yes	No
S27 Poor quality decisions	Yes	No	No

Figure 3 - Planning Inspectorate’s risk appetite scales

Averse

Avoidance of risk and uncertainty in achievement of key deliverables or initiatives is the key objective. Activities undertaken will only be those considered to carry virtually no inherent risk.

Minimalist

Preference for very safe business delivery options that have a low degree of inherent risk with the potential for benefit/return not a key driver. Activities will only be undertaken where they have a low degree of inherent risk.

Cautious

Preference for safe options that have low degree of inherent risk and only limited potential for benefit. Willing to tolerate a degree of risk in selecting which activities to undertake to achieve key deliverables or initiatives, where we have identified scope to achieve significant benefit and /or realised an opportunity.

Open

Willing to consider all options and choose one most likely to result in successful delivery while providing an acceptable level of benefit. Seek to achieve a balance between a high likelihood of successful delivery and a high degree of benefit and value for money.

Eager

Eager to be innovative and to choose options based on maximising opportunities and potential higher benefit even if those activities carry a very high residual risk.

Our Quality Assurance

Delivering high quality work is fundamental to our reputation as a highly respected, fair, open and impartial decision-making body. Consequently, we take steps from recruitment through to output to ensure quality is maintained and, where necessary, improved.

Quality Assurance in relation to casework outcomes is a structured, repeatable process. It aims to ensure that our decisions, reports and recommendations, as well as our public hearing, examination and inquiry events, meet our users’ needs by:

• being led by knowledgeable and professional decision makers;

• being delivered to appropriate timescales;

• being concise, easy to understand and authoritative;

• covering the key matters fairly, openly and impartially; and

• being free from significant errors.

The Quality Assurance process begins with recruitment, to ensure candidates are suitable for the role of a decision maker (which includes planning inspectors, Appeal Planning Officers and RTPI Apprentices) at the Inspectorate.

Candidates are required to demonstrate that they have the appropriate behaviours, strengths and experience, including written and interpersonal skills. Once appointed, our decision makers are given extensive initial training on the areas of casework on which they will be deployed.

When this training is complete, all decision makers have ongoing access to in-house support, guidance and learning opportunities, in a variety of forms and casework areas. This ensures, among other things, that they remain up-to-date with changes to policy, case law and regulation.

We rigorously capture feedback from pre- and post-issue reviews of decisions, reports and recommendations. In 2024/25 we took steps to make this process more rigorous, requiring our inspector managers to conduct a higher volume of systematic post-issue reading on a random selection of issued decisions, thereby improving our understanding of our quality and generating further insights. In addition we peer observe hearings, examinations and inquiries, the findings from which we systematically review each quarter. We also draw out lessons from High Court challenges to our work, whether successful or not. We feed learning from these processes back into our guidance for decision makers. Finally, we report and publish quarterly information on the number of decisions that we have quality assured.

We meet stakeholder groups and interested parties from across the wider planning sector on a regular basis, and we conduct an annual survey from these stakeholders, to hear first-hand the experiences of their members and to seek solutions to mutual problems. We also provide an increasing amount of outreach and education to a wide range of our users to ensure that there is clarity about what we do and do not find useful, so that our various processes can be as efficient as possible.

We feed learning from these sessions back into our guidance for decision makers. We undertake regular management reviews of the effectiveness of our internal assurance processes.

Internal Controls

As part of our governance arrangements, we have specific controls in place across the Inspectorate to ensure that we comply with legal and regulatory requirements as well as undertake best practice.

Functional standards

The Government Functional Standards exist to create a coherent, effective and mutually understood way of doing business within government organisations and across organisational boundaries. This provides a stable basis for assurance, risk management and capability improvement. There are 14 functional standards covering areas including Finance, Commercial, HR, Project Delivery and Digital. Ongoing reviews of mandatory compliance have continued to be undertaken and reviewed since our initial assessment in 2021/22 and, where appropriate, included in work plans going forwards.

Internal audits

A key source of independent assurance for the Inspectorate is the internal audit function provided by the Government Internal Audit Agency, which complies with the Public Sector Internal Audit Standards that were in place for 2024/25. The annual internal audit programme is closely linked to the Inspectorate’s key risks. Arrangements are in place to ensure that the Accounting Officer is made aware of any significant issues which indicate that key risks are not being effectively managed.

The Head of Internal Audit’s (HIA) opinion on governance, risk management and control for the year was assessed as Moderate. The opinion takes into consideration the context in which the Inspectorate has had to operate over the year, which included the balance between speed and quality of casework decisions. The HIA recognised that the Inspectorate has taken action to address appropriate areas highlighted in previous annual opinions, especially implementation of outstanding audit recommendations. The HIA acknowledged steps taken for a continuation of a strong core controls environment, especially surrounding cyber security, counter fraud, procurement and overtime. With a new government and new priorities, especially surrounding planning reform, the HIA acknowledged workforce planning arrangements that are being taken forward.

Risk management

Our risk management processes are aligned to The UK Government Orange Book: Management of Risk - Principles and Concepts. The Executive Team is responsible for setting our risk appetite, which is reviewed by the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee.

Risks are managed throughout the Inspectorate and escalated to the Executive Team when they are strategic in nature. The strategic risks detailed are owned by the Executive Team. We provide visibility of our strategic risks to the MHCLG risk management team who undertake a review on an annual basis.

What we did in 2024/25

• Undertook a comprehensive review of the content of the Strategic Risk Register with the Executive Team, Board and ARAC, including detailed discussions with all risk owners.

• Completed a review of the Corporate Risk Appetite Scales and implemented the new risk appetite and tolerance approach across strategic, unit and local registers.

• Maintained a holistic approach to risk management via our new Risk Management Framework to ensure risks are appropriately managed through the relevant processes and escalation points.

• Engaged with staff to maintain the profile of risk management within the organisation, through regular meetings and updates via the intranet, including Risk Awareness Week (May 2024).

Plans for 2025/26

• Complete a Risk Maturity Assessment on a Comply or Explain basis, in line with the guidance set out by HM Treasury.

• Develop our assurance metrics across the three lines of defence via the new Risk Assurance Framework.

• Undertake a series of deep-dive reviews of strategic risks, focusing on material detail and potential impacts to objectives, and establish a benchmark for the activities.

• Review the way we document risks across the Inspectorate, including consideration of an appropriate and fit-for-purpose tool to manage risk in an effective, timely and trackable manner.

• Host a series of workshops and webinars to enhance risk management awareness and culture.

Business continuity

The business continuity process aims to increase our resilience and minimise the risk of disruption to our services. Planning for business continuity ensures we can reinstate critical services as quickly as possible following a disrupting event. We review, update and test the process yearly to ensure continuous improvement.

What we did in 2024/25

• Updated business continuity plans with the outcomes of the business continuity exercise carried out in 2022/23.

• Completed a business continuity scenario, including a data capture to consider lessons learned from the exercise.

• Made a series of recommendations for improvement, agreed by the Executive Team.

• Completed a bi-annual review of all local Business Continuity Plans.

Plans for 2025/26

• Undertake a business continuity scenario, considering lessons learned from the exercise and implement improvements as required.

• Introduce the identified changes to the organizational business continuity plan, including Crisis Management Team.

• Develop the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery approach.

• Raise awareness of business continuity via a series of workshops and communication for Business Continuity and Resilience Week, to further improve culture.

Fraud and bribery

We continue to work to prevent and identify fraud. We do this by raising awareness about fraud and through activities to mitigate the risk of fraud within the Inspectorate. Our 2024/25 audit rating against the Counter Fraud Functional Standard is ’substantial’.

What we did in 2024/25

• A full review of our Counter Fraud Policy and Response Plan, Strategy and Action Plan, in adherence to the Government Functional Standard for Counter Fraud GovS013.

• Joined the National Fraud Initiative and supplied data to the Public Sector Fraud Initiative as part of the initial assessment of Payroll and Accounts Payable, addressing all items raised and onboarding as a member.

• Trained staff in Fraud Risk Assessment via CIPFA to support capability and developments to our work.

• Attended the Government Counter Fraud Function and scoped lessons learned for application at the Inspectorate.

• Raised awareness across the Inspectorate, including sharing a blog for Counter Fraud Awareness Week.

• Initiated research into further training materials for all staff.

Plans for 2025/26

• Complete the Inspectorate’s Fraud Risk Assessment.

• Complete an annual review of the Inspectorate’s Counter Fraud Strategy.

• Introduce a Counter Fraud Framework to best support activities to detect and identify threats and instances of fraud.

• Enhance counter fraud awareness and further improve culture, including during Counter Fraud Awareness Week.

Change management

The delivery of change activity in the Inspectorate is prioritised and planned as part of the annual business planning cycle. In 2024/25 progress was tracked on a monthly basis and reported to the Executive Team in the Balanced Scorecard, alongside escalation of issues and/or decisions. A core team, along with key Business Partners, perform and advise on the full range of project management functions. These range from assessing and challenging changes and progress, reviewing our ability to deliver changes, and advising and agreeing budget variances when needed.

Our self-assessment rating against the Project Delivery Functional Standard is ‘developing’.

What we did in 2024/25

• Developed a new approach to benefit definition, tracking and reporting.

• Implemented changes to the reporting of change progress and exception reporting.

• Reviewed processes and templates to support change initiatives, to streamline processes.

Plans for 2025/26

• Refine and further develop benefit management approach and processes.

• Develop and rollout a new Portfolio Management Office function better to support and monitor change in the Service Model.

• Implement iterative change processes better to align with similar processes in our Strategic Planning, Digital and Innovation functions.

• Implement changes to ensure that there is a big picture view of all change across the organisation to maximise successful adoption and opportunities for join-up.

• Upskill key colleagues across the Inspectorate on project delivery skills.

Whistleblowing

Our people can report misconduct anonymously via telephone, an online web report or email using the SeeHearSpeakUp confidential service. Reports are routed to our Nominated Officers who can also be approached by whistleblowers directly and whose responsibility it is to co-ordinate a response to any received reports.

Three reports were made, investigated and closed this year.

What we did in 2024/25

• Worked with HR colleagues and our external service provider to raise awareness within the Inspectorate of the importance of raising concerns.

• Continued to seek improved assurance on the effectiveness of our arrangements.

Plans for 2025/26

• Launch revised Raising a Concern and Dispute Resolution policies to simplify our approaches to handling complaints and concerns of all kinds.

Information security

The Inspectorate’s information security measures are being strengthened through a multi-programme approach. Last year’s GovAssure audit identified 55 recommendations for enhancing confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Remediation activities are strengthening our defences against both existing and emerging cyber threats. In 2024/25 there were no data breaches which met the threshold for reporting to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

What we did in 2024/25

• Recruited additional information security staff to increase capacity to proactively identify and mitigate business risks from cyber threats.

• Continued to increase cyber awareness across the Inspectorate.

• Established the engagement process of the Digital Security Service with the Inspectorate’s other services to ensure they are integrated.

• Conducted a review of policies relating to information security, data protection and records management.

Plans for 2025/26

• Deploy a Data Loss Prevention solution to strengthen Data Privacy and align with best practices and Cyber Assessment Framework requirements.

• Carry out service-level digital asset discovery to enhance and improve our management of risk within our MISSION-CRITICAL stems and services.

• Prepare our systems and processes for introduction of Secure By Design principles in 2026.

• Seek to further enable the organisation to safely leverage new AI capabilities and technologies.

Legal controls

Decisions from inspectors are covered by Crown Indemnity. This means that the Inspectorate, rather than an individual inspector, is liable for decisions taken. Our quality assurance processes test the legality of contentious or complex case decisions before we reach any final decision.

The Government Legal Department advises and supports us on casework matters and in response to legal challenges. Successful challenges can be the result of human error or when the inspector and a judge have interpreted the law differently. We regularly analyse court outcomes for lessons learned that can be integrated into training and/or revision of guidance on case law interpretation.

Our Ex Gratia Policy is in place to allow for discretionary payments to be made where there is no legal obligation to do so, but parties have claimed for costs, typically in situations where maladministration or poor service has caused a person to suffer a financial loss or significant inconvenience, and where it is considered fair and reasonable to offer redress. Awards are reviewed and authorised through independent and financial checks.

What we did in 2024/25

• Laid the foundations for a new and improved digital system for recording and managing data relating to court challenges.

• Closely tracked the introduction of new planning legislation and updated our guidance and procedures.

• Analysed legal challenges to identify lessons learned and updated our guidance for inspectors.

Plans for 2025/26

• Finalised the design and then rollout of the new digital platform for court challenges.

• Continue to monitor changes to planning, including Planning Reform, and adapt our approach in line with any increased risk of challenge.

• Continue to analyse legal challenges to identify lessons learned and update our guidance for inspectors.

Data protection

Data protection in the Inspectorate has matured steadily with the implementation of the Governance Project which was initiated to improve processes, organisational culture and accountability in relation to data protection.

What we did in 2024/25

• Data sharing agreements put in place with LPAs with a current 87% take-up rate.

• Records and Information Management policy presented to the internal Office of the Chief Digital Information Officer.

• Improved the Data Protection Impact Assessment process, making it more user-friendly.

• Prepared for new data protection legislation and provided advice on implementation of redaction procedures.

Plans for 2025/26

• Carry out a self-assessment against the Information Commissioner’s accountability tracker to assess the inspectorate’s compliance with information governance best practice.

• Implement changes to procedures and policies brought about by enactment of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill.

• Implement a governance framework for the adoption of Generative AI tools.

• Improve policy and guidance around redaction to ensure a clear and consistent approach across the organization.

• Review procedures for handling data subject rights requests.

• Review local planning authorities Data Sharing Agreements and consider whether an alternative approach such as memorandum of understanding may be appropriate.

Human resources

Our human resources controls are set out in our policies and procedures. The Civil Service Commission regularly audits our systems to ensure compliance with the framework on our recruitment and selection standards. Our self-assessment rating against the Human Resources Functional Standard is ‘good’, however we are keen to improve this. In compliance with business appointment rules the department is transparent in the advice given to individual applications for senior staff: advice regarding specific business appointments has been published on the Inspectorate’s GOV.UK page.

What we did in 2024/25

• Maintained compliance with Human Resources Functional Standards, launched our Human Resources Skills Framework, and completed our first Skills Audit with plans to address our known skill gaps.

• Launched our Employee Central System to provide better and consistent data support for line managers and to aid decision making.

Plans for 2025/26

• Embedding our new Capability Framework to create a robust strategic workforce plan reflecting our future needs.

• Establishing a task-force from across the organisation to make recommendations and take action to address our Gender Pay Gap.

Health, safety and wellbeing

We continue to progress in all areas of health, safety and wellbeing, and have updated our delivery plan. In 2024/25 we recorded 16 near misses, seven accidents and 15 incidents. We have identified this control area as a strategic risk.

What we did in 2024/25

• Continued with the stress project group to address this risk.

• Implemented policy and procedure for Display Screen Equipment (DSE), home-working and risk assessments.

• Trained all managers in risk assessment and tasked managers to develop team risk assessments.

• Rolled out DSE assessment and training, putting reasonable adjustments in place as required.

Plans for 2025/26

• Develop and implement policy and procedure in relation to driving for work, accident, incident and near miss reporting, electrical safety, working at height and Personal Protective Equipment.

• Review our use of lone worker protective technology.

Conflict of interest

All of our people, contractors and Non-Executive Directors are required to declare any potential conflicts, in-line with the Nolan Principles of Public Life or the Franks Principles, on appointment and as they arise. It is a standing agenda item for the Board, ARAC and Executive Team Meetings.

In 2024/25 declarations were noted at the following meetings: two at Board, one at an ARAC and three at Executive Team meetings. On each occurrence it was agreed that the member who made the declaration did not need to remove themselves from discussion. All Chief Officers check and update the declarations of interest register as part of the Annual Report and Accounts process.

The Inspectorate’s Conflict of Interest policy was refreshed in 2023/24 to ensure we have consistent processes, including on how we record decisions, and to make it clearer to understand and act upon potential conflicts. The new policy is written in practical language and includes example case studies.

What we did in 2024/25

• Expanded the conflict of interest checks undertaken on suppliers and department staff involved in procurements and/or contract management.

• Implemented improved recording and assurance procedures for conflicts of interest.

• Provided guidance and training on how to abide by the new policy.

Plans for 2025/26

• Continue to monitor disclosures and decisions and where necessary update the Board-level declarations of interest register.

• Undertake a review of the effectiveness of the conflict of interest policy updated in 2023/24.

Commercial controls

Our commercial controls have ensured effective delivery of contracts, providing value for money and compliance with procurement regulations. In the year we awarded 78 new contracts.

Overall, 18 contracts were procured on a direct award basis without competition; all controlled through an established process to manage risk.

We have managed our suppliers through a range of techniques dependent on value, criticality and contract type. Taking a collaborative approach, we delivered value for money, increased innovation and transferred skills to our people. We shared risks with suppliers and agreed liabilities and insurances, formalised in the terms and conditions of our contracts.

Our self-assessment rating against the Commercial Functional Standard is ‘good’.

What we did in 2024/25

• Prepared for the Procurement Act 2023 which went live on 24 February 2025 and implemented new ways of working to ensure compliance and continuation of operational activity.

• Procured and implemented a new digital procurement system.

• Developed a Contract Management Framework and procurement policy for the organisation, aligning with new ways of working.

• Launched a new, streamlined ‘less than £1k’ buying process.

• Removed all Government Procurement Cards.

• Procured a supply chain to support the Social Value Model objectives and strategic priorities for public procurement set out in the National Procurement Policy Statement.

Plans for 2025/26

• Launch the contract management framework and procurement policy, with clear guidance for staff.

• Implement further elements of the digital procurement system.

• Continue to prepare, implement and embed new procurement regulations.

Property

We previously reported that we had moved out of our headquarters in Temple Quay House, Bristol whilst the GPA completed a refurbishment. Whilst we had intended to move back into Temple Quay House, GPA informed us in November 2024, that there was no longer sufficient space for the Inspectorate in Temple Quay House and notice was served on us to vacate.

Our self-assessment against the Property Functional Standard is ‘developing’.

What we did in 2024/25

• Fully vacated Temple Quay House in August 2025.

• Closed our smaller offices in central Bristol.

• Procured a larger, temporary office.

• Created an inviting, professional, collaborative office and meeting facility to enable people to work together in one space.

• Managed changes for our people, ensuring their health, safety and wellbeing were protected.

Plans for 2025/26

• Continue to manage the estate for our people with a focus on health, safety, security and wellbeing.

• Define our future property needs and strategy.

• Begin the procurement for our longer-term office solution.

Management information

Effective management information is about more than storing data - it’s about ensuring the right data reaches the right people at the right time to support confident, evidence-based decisions. Whether at the frontline or in senior leadership, individuals across the Inspectorate need access to reliable, timely, and well-structured information to manage performance, monitor risk, and improve services.

Our Information Management System underpins this by providing a business data catalogue, master data map, and information asset register. These tools are designed to define our data model, clarify ownership, and track where data is stored and mastered, supporting both transparency and accountability.

Our self-assessment rating against both the Digital, Data and Technology Functional Standard and the Analysis Functional Standard remains ‘Good’.

What we did in 2024/25

• Expanded and refined our approach to data management and data model, improving our ability to manage data lineage, ownership, and standards.

• Enhanced management reporting and automated processes, boosting the timeliness and accuracy of outputs.

• Developed the Operational Data Warehouse (ODW) using modern cloud technologies to centralise data from new and legacy systems, creating a single source of truth for reporting.

  • Casework from new appeals and applications services is now fully integrated into the ODW.

  • Around two-thirds of our in-scope data sources are now integrated, including 75% of appeals casework (e.g., Householder and s78 cases) and NSIP.

• Delivered complex, cross-team data pipelines using Azure Function Apps, Service Bus, Data Lake, Synapse Pipelines, and Microsoft Purview, aligned to our medallion architecture.

• Designed and proved a Data Quality Framework to drive consistent data quality assessment and enforcement, to be embedded into our operational reporting processes.

• Integrated SAP people data into the ODW, enabling improved workforce analytics and forming a blueprint for further personal data integrations.

• Developed demand forecasting and decision-making efficiency analytics, further supporting strategic and operational insight.

• Initiated a semi-automated redaction tool to enhance our data privacy controls, especially in preparation for expanding use of personal data in reporting.

• Changed the frequency of some Official Statistics publications from monthly to quarterly, allowing us to allocate more resource to reviewing and improving our publications. Improved Official Statistics production processes by making use of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines to ensure accuracy, consistency and efficiency of statistical production.

Plans for 2025/26

• Further improve our ability to measure, communicate and improve data quality governance across systems.

• Continue integration of the Inspectorate’s data estate into the ODW, including remaining legacy or unmanaged datasets.

• Further develop live management tools for real-time performance monitoring.

• Implement AI tools to enhance operational decision-making and automation.

• Upgrade internal management systems to improve clarity, usability, and engagement.

• Further implementation of Data Quality rules with business owners brought onboard. We are accountable to MHCLG for how we prepare and spend our budget allocation. Our processes comply with the Civil Service guidance, Managing Public Money. We operate effectively, efficiently and focus on providing value for money. We conduct quarterly reviews to assure our Business Plan delivery and financial management.

Financial Controls

We are accountable to MHCLG for how we prepare and spend our budget allocation. Our processes comply with the Civil Service guidance, Managing Public Money. We operate effectively, efficiently and focus on providing value for money. We conduct quarterly reviews to assure our Business Plan delivery and financial management.

What we did in 2024/25

• Rolled out corporate and individual budget holder management reports to aid understanding of budgets and communication of key points.

• Developed activity-based costing for greater alignment of costs to business plan activities and to set daily rates for re-chargeable casework.

• Developed standardised procedures for income collection.

• Supported the operational team in introducing the NSIP pre-application.

Plans for 2025/26

• Adjust the new corporate and individual budget holder management reports by service to provide greater service to managers.

• Review the effectiveness of an activity-based costing and price setting model, updating it to reflect current business activity.

• Continue to support operational teams in various legislative planning reforms ensuring cost is understood and appropriate charge out rates set.

External complaints

Customers can raise complaints if they are dissatisfied with the service received from the Inspectorate. This may include concerns about administrative or factual errors, failure to meet service standards, non-adherence to procedural guidance, or perceptions of poor conduct. Customers may also raise complaints if they believe the Inspectorate has not followed the appropriate planning policy, guidance, or legislation.

The Inspectorate encourages customers to raise concerns informally at first with the relevant team, aiming for a prompt resolution. If unresolved, customers can escalate their concerns through our formal complaints procedure which includes two internal stages. We carry out a robust and impartial  investigation at each stage. Where complaints are upheld, we provide feedback to the relevant teams and inspectors, and use our complaints analysis process to identify root causes, capture learning, and implement corrective actions.

Customers who remain dissatisfied after completing our internal complaints process may escalate their concerns to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) via their MP. In 2024/25 we received 2 complaints, of which neither were upheld by the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman.

Graph 19 - Complaints to the Parliamentary and Health Service ombudsman

	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
Complaints received by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman	39	41	38	13	2
Complaints partially or fully upheld by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman	0	0	0	1	0

Summary

Balancing our annual internal audit opinion, our self-assessment of compliance with functional standards and our internal risk framework assessment, we conclude we have adequate controls in place which are operating effectively. We also have a good understanding of which areas require focus as part of our organisational commitment to continuous improvement.

Paul Morrison, Chief Executive 20 June 2025

Remuneration Report

The remuneration report summarises our remuneration policy and disclosures on Directors’ remuneration as required by Section 421 of the Companies Act 2006 adapted for the public sector context.

Directors’ remuneration policy

The remuneration of Senior Civil Servants (SCS) is subject to an independent pay body review process. It is set centrally by the government based on the recommendations made by the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB). Bonuses are made as part of the SCS performance management process and recognise performance level attained. Bonuses reported for the year 2024/25 relate to performance in 2023/24, bonuses reported for 2023/24 relate to performance in 2022/23.

Directors’ notice period is a minimum of three months.

Remuneration and pension entitlements (including Cash Equivalent Transfer Values (CETV) disclosures) for Directors and Board members

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

Accrued pension benefits for directors are not included in this table as the information will not be provided by MyCSP until the 9th June 2025.

The single total figures of remuneration for Directors, for the year ended 31 March 2025 are shown in Table 3 with the comparative figures for the year ended 31 March 2024.

Table 3 - Single total figures of remuneration for Directors for the year ended 31 March 2025

	Year	Salary and fees paid £’000 in bands of £5,000	Bonus £’000 in bands of  £5,000	Taxable benefits £ to the nearest  £100	Pension related benefits* £ to the nearest £1,000	Total for 2024/25 (2023/24) £’000 in bands of £5,000
Accounting Officer
Paul Morrison Chief Executive	24/25 23/24	135-140 (130-135)	5-10 (0-5)	- (-)	- (-)	145-150 (135-140)
Executive Directors
Joanne Butcher Chief Finance Officer	24/25 23/24	85-90 (75-80)	5-10 (0-5)	-  (-)	-  (-)	90-95  (80-85)
Sean Canavan Chief Strategy Officer	24/25 23/24	85-90 (80-85)	0  (0-5)	- (-)	- (-)	85-90  (85-90)
Rachel Graham Chief Digital and Information Officer	24/25 23/24	70-75 80-85 full-year equivalent (65-70 80-85 full-year full-time equivalent)	5-10 (0-5)	-  (-)	-  (-)	75-80 (65-70)
Hayley Kelly Chief People Officer (from 1 April 2024)	24/25 23/24	85-90  (-)	-  (-)	-  (-)	- (-)	85-90  (-)
Richard Schofield Chief Planning Inspector	24/25 23/24	90-95 (85-90)	- (0-5)	- (-)	-  (-)	90-95 (85-90)
Graham Stallwood Chief Operating Officer	24/25 23/24	115-120 (110-115)	0-5 (0-5)	- (-)	- (-)	115-120 (115-120)
Simon Levi Interim Chief People Officer (from March 2023 until August 2023)	- 23/24	- (30-35 75-80 full-year equivalent)	- (0-5)	- (-)	- (-)	-  (30-35)
Shilpi Sahai Chief People Officer (from July 2023 to March 2024)	- 23/24	- (65-70 80-85 full-year equivalent)	- (-)	- (-)	- (-)	- (65-70)
	Year	Salary and fees paid £’000 in bands of £5,000	Bonus £’000 in bands of  £5,000	Taxable benefits £ to the nearest  £100	Pension related benefits* £ to the nearest £1,000	Total for 2024/25 (2023/24) £’000 in bands of £5,000
Non-Executive Directors
Trudi Elliott Chair, Non- Executive	24/25 23/24	20-25 (20-25)	- (-)	- (-)	-  (-)	20-25 (20-25)
Emir Feisal Director, Non- Executive	24/25 23/24	10-15 (5-10 10-15 full-year equivalent)	- (-)	- (-)	- (-)	10-15 (5-10)
Oliver Munn Director, Non- Executive	24/25 23/24	10-15 (5-10 10-15 full-year equivalent)	- (-)	- (-)	- (-)	10-15 (5-10)
Adrian Penfold Director, Non- Executive	24/25  23/24	10-15 (5-10 10-15 full-year equivalent)	-  (-)	-  (-)	- (-)	10-15 (5-10)
Sally Dixon Director, Non- Executive (until July 2023)	24/25  23/24	- (0-5 10-15 full-year equivalent)	- (-)	- (-)	-  (-)	- (0-5)
Dr Rebecca Driver Director, Non-Executive (until September 2023)	24/25 23/24	- (5-10 10-15 full-year equivalent)	- (-)	-  (-)	- (-)	- (5-10)
Stephen Tetlow Director, Non- Executive (until September 2023)		- (5-10 10-15 full-year equivalent)	- (-)	- (-)	-  (-)	-  (5-10)

Non-Executive Directors are contracted for three to four years. Their notice period is usually one month long. There are some specific events that can trigger termination by the Secretary of State.

Directors’ pension disclosure

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

In financial year 2023/24 the accrued pension benefits for directors were not included in the annual report and accounts due to an exceptional delay in the calculation of these figures following the application of the public service pension remedy. For completeness, the accrued pension benefits are provided for financial years 2024/25 and 2023/24.

Table 4a - Directors’ pension disclosure 2024/25

	Real increase in pension and related lump sum at pension age £’000 in bands of £2,500	Total accrued pension at pension age at 31/3/25 and related lump sum £’000 in bands of £5,000	Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) in £k to the nearest £1,000 As at 31/03/24	Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) in £k to the nearest £1,000 As at 31/03/25	Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) in £k to the nearest £1,000 Real Increase
Paul Morrison  Chief Executive	2.5-5  plus a lump sum of  2.5-5	50-55  plus a lump sum of  120-125	966	1078	66
Joanne Butcher  Chief Finance Officer	0-2.5	10-15	88	119	17
Sean Canavan  Chief Strategy Officer	0-2.5	35-40	547	624	27
Rachel Graham  Chief Digital and Information Officer	0-2.5	20-25	348	395	28
Simon Levi  Chief People Officer (to Aug-23)	0	0	0	0	0
Shilpi Sahai  Chief People Officer (Sep-23 to Mar-24)  Opted out of the pension scheme	0	0	0	0	0
Hayley Kelly  Chief People Officer (from Apr-25)	0-2.5  plus a lump sum of  0	25-30  plus a lump sum of  70-75	523	559	13
Richard Schofield  Chief Planning Inspector	0-2.5	20-25	310	352	10
Graham Stallwood  Chief Operating Officer	2.5-5	15-20	181	233	29

Table 4b - Directors’ pension disclosure 2023/24

	Real increase in pension and related lump sum at pension age £’000 in bands of £2,500	Total accrued pension at pension age at 31/3/24 and related lump sum £’000 in bands of £5,000	Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) in £k to the nearest £1,000 As at 31/03/23	Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) in £k to the nearest £1,000 As at 31/03/24	Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) in £k to the nearest £1,000 Real Increase
Paul Morrison  Chief Executive	5-7.5  plus a lump sum of  12.5-15	45-50  plus a lump sum of  115-120	761	966	130
Joanne Butcher  Chief Finance Officer	0-2.5	5-10	60	88	15
Sean Canavan  Chief Strategy Officer	0-2.5	30-35	460	547	25
Rachel Graham  Chief Digital and Information Officer	0-2.5	20-25	298	348	19
Simon Levi  Chief People Officer (to Aug-23)	0-2.5	20-25	383	436	33
Shilpi Sahai  Chief People Officer (Sep-23 to Mar-24)  Opted out of the pension scheme	0	0	0	0	0
Hayley Kelly  Chief People Officer (from Apr-25)	0	0	0	0	0
Richard Schofield  Chief Planning Inspector	0-2.5	20-25	251	310	23
Graham Stallwood  Chief Operating Officer	2.5-5	10-15	131	181	27

Real increase in Cash Equivalent Transfer Values

A Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) is the actuarially assessed capitalised value of the pension scheme benefits accrued by a member at a particular point in time. The benefits valued are the member’s accrued benefits and any contingent spouse’s pension payable from the scheme. A CETV is a payment made by a pension scheme or arrangement to secure pension benefits in another pension scheme or arrangement when the member leaves a scheme and chooses to transfer the benefits accrued in their former scheme. The pension figures shown relate to the benefits that the individual has accrued as a consequence of their total membership of the pension scheme, not just their service in a senior capacity to which disclosure applies. The figures include the value of any pension benefit in another scheme or arrangement, which the member has transferred to the Civil Service pension arrangements. They also include any additional pension benefit accrued to the member as a result of their buying additional pension benefits at their own cost. CETVs are worked out in accordance with The Occupational Pension Schemes (Transfer Values) (Amendment) Regulations 2008 and do not take account of any actual or potential reduction to benefits resulting from Lifetime Allowance Tax which may be due when pension benefits are taken. The rate of the Lifetime Allowance Tax was 0% for 2024/25 and was abolished completely from the 6th April 2025.

CETV figures are calculated using the guidance on discount rates for calculating unfunded public service pension contribution rates that was extant at 31 March 2025.

Real increase in Cash Equivalent Transfer Values

This reflects the increase in Cash Equivalent Transfer Values that is funded by the Exchequer. It does not include the increase in accrued pension due to inflation, contributions paid by the employee (including the value of any benefits transferred from another pension scheme or arrangement) and uses common market valuation factors for the start and end of the period.

Compensation on early retirement or loss of office

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

No payments were made in financial year 2024/25 (also zero in financial year 2023/24).

Payments to past Directors

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

Directors do not have any entitlements to pay after their departure date.

Fair pay disclosure

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

Table 5 - Fair pay disclosure

	2024/25	2023/24
Change in highest paid Director’s total pay	7%	8%
Change in highest paid Director’s bonus	84%	N/A
Average change in total pay of employees	3%	4%
Average change in bonuses of employees	-90%	-2%
Band of Highest Paid Director’s Total Remuneration (£’000)	145-150	135-140
Median Total – inspector	£65,558	£64,761
Remuneration Ratio - inspector	2.25	2.12
Median Total - Support	£31,193	£36,807
Remuneration Ratio - Support	4.73	3.74

The only bonus entitlements this year were to SCS graded staff whose pay arrangements are set centrally as identified in the Directors’ remuneration policy of this report.

Reporting bodies are required to disclose the relationship between the remuneration of the highest paid director in their organisation and the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile of the organisation’s workforce.

Table 6 - Fair pay percentile ratios for the whole workforce

		2024/25			2023/24
	Pay ratio	Total pay	Salary	Pay ratio	Total pay	Salary
25th Percentile	4.7	£31,132	£31,132	4.4	£31,543	£31,360
50th Percentile	2.8	£52,251	£52,251	2.6	£53,574	£53,483
75th Percentile	2.2	£67,119	£67,119	2.1	£65,566	£65,383

The 3% average change in total pay is reflective of the annual pay rise agreed from the annual pay remit (5% from 1st August 2024). The decreased in the 25th and 50th percentile is due to recruiting a larger number of support staff at lower grades. The average change in bonuses of employees has increased since the Senior Salaries Review Body awarded bonuses to the senior civil service, whereas the pay remit for lower grades, delegated to the Planning Inspectorate to decide locally, did not award an annual bonus.

The banded remuneration of the highest paid Director in the financial year 2024/25 was £145,000 - £150,000 (2022/23: 135,000-140,000). This was 2.25 times (inspectors); 4.73 times (support) (2023/24: 2.12 (inspectors); 3.74 (support)). The median remuneration of the workforce, which was £65,558 (inspector); £31,193 (support) (2023/24: £64,761 (inspectors); £36,807 (support)). The remuneration ratio calculation is based on the full-time equivalent staff at the reporting period-end date on an annualised basis.

The latest report shows our mean gender pay gap reduced to 13.7% demonstrating that our overall pay gap has closed slightly. Meanwhile, there has been an increase to the median pay gap to 15.4%. These figures correspond with our turnover and recruitment data and are driven by  structural differences in our workforce. A high proportion (49%) of the workforce are members of the planning profession and despite seeing large numbers of men leaving senior graded planning roles and success in recruiting more females, we appointed a greater number of men to senior planning grades. This is indicative of the wider profession; however, we are committed to addressing gender pay. Information on the gender pay gap for the Planning Inspectorate is published on GOV.UK.

In 2024/25 no employees received remuneration in excess of the highest paid Director (2023/24: nil). However, temporary staff, necessary to provide essential cover for vacant posts, received remuneration rates in excess of the highest paid Director. Of these temporary employees, ten remained in post at 31 March 2025. Remuneration ranged from £182,000 to £10,500 (2023/24 £186,000 to £10,500) including the highest paid Director. Total remuneration includes salary, non- consolidated performance-related pay and benefits-in-kind. It does not include severance payments, employer pension contributions and the cash equivalent transfer value of pensions.

Staff Report

Staff numbers

For the financial year 2024/25, we employed (average, full-time equivalent) 890 staff (see Table 7). This total was made up of 48% women, and 52% men which included 3 women and 4 men at Senior Civil Service grades. Colleague numbers include a mixture of full and part-time employees, home- based salaried inspectors and office-based staff in our Bristol office.

The average number of full-time equivalent persons employed by us (including management) during the year to 31 March 2025 was as follows in Table 7. Turnover rate for all staff in 2024/25 was 7.3% (2023/24 8.81%).

Voluntary turnover rates, i.e. excluding non-voluntary (end of fixed contracts, dismissals, natural causes,) for all staff was 5.23%.

We used the services of two seconded-in staff during the year. These services were used at management level to support us with a priority posts for periods exceeding six months. At 31 March 2025, 52 colleagues were on contracts for a fixed term duration.

Table 7 - Average Number of full-time equivalent staff employed in year (This table has been subject to audit)

	Permanent	Permanent
	2024/25	2023/24
Senior Civil Service Pay Band 2	1	1
Senior Civil Service Pay Band 1	6	6
Grade 6-7 (Senior Staff)	58	53
Salaried inspector	421	411
Support	153	133
Caseworkers	251	235
Total	890	839
Less Secondments	0	(1)
Add Agency	4	15
Total Employed	894	853

Trade Unions

The organisation formally recognises two Unions: Public and Commercial Services, representing mostly office-based colleagues, and Prospect, representing inspectors. Formal consultation with the Unions took place largely through the four Whitley meetings held this year and separately on more detailed policy developments and a pay and reward programme. We also work with the Unions and employees, both formally and informally, on management proposals that have a direct bearing on how colleagues work, ensuring that there is a common understanding of the impact on individuals.

In 2024/25 consultations with Trade Unions included: Pay and Reward; Adoption Leave and Pay; Maternity Leave and Pay; Supporting Attendance; Probation; Parental Leave.

We are required to publish information in the following tables in accordance with the Trade Union (Facility Time Publication Requirements) Regulations 2017.

Table 8 - Trade Union representation

Employees who were relevant Union officials during the period	Full-time equivalent
14	12.45

Note: FTE based on point of time rather than 13 month average used in staff cost section.

Table 9 - Percentage of time spent on facility time

Percentage of time	Number of employees
0%	-
1-50%	14
51-99%	-
100%	-

Table 10 - Percentage of pay bill spent on facility time

Total cost of facility time	£67,108.26
Total pay bill	£63,035,977.80
Facility time cost as percentage of pay bill	0.11%

The total pay bill figure is representative of salary payments, whereas the Staff costs include accounting adjustments necessary for the financial statements.

Table 11 - Paid Trade Union activities

Time spent on paid Trade Union activities as a percentage of total paid facility time hours

100%

Attendance management

The average working days lost through sickness absence in 2024/25 was 5.2 days compared to 5.8 days in 2023/24. The days absent are split approximately evenly across long-term and short-term absence cases with causes varying (the highest being mental health and respiratory conditions). We continue to work closely with line managers to ensure that appropriate support is provided to individuals through reasonable adjustments, return to work interviews and use of the Employee Assistance Programme.

Staff policies

Remuneration policy

The Remuneration Report summarises our remuneration policy and disclosures on Directors’ remuneration as required by Section 421 of the Companies Act 2006 adapted for the public sector context.

Recruitment

All recruitment is carried out on the basis of fair and open competition, and selection is made on merit. Recruitment processes are fair and are reviewed to take account of any changes to employment legislation.

Equality and diversity

The proportion of colleagues that consider themselves to have a disability in 2024/25 remained low at 8.57%, this figure is a slight increase on 2023/24. When recruiting colleagues, we continue to guarantee an interview to disabled candidates who meet the core requirements of the job description and person specification under the Disability Confident scheme. We also offer support to candidates through the provision of reasonable adjustments. We continue to offer support and training to all colleagues either: when they join the organisation; or during their employment, to support them with a disability in the workplace and are developing a leadership capability programme that will include line manager training on all relevant elements of inclusive people management, including supporting those with disabilities. We are also reviewing our workplace adjustments information to make sure the process is easily understood.

Staff costs

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

Table 12 includes the total staff costs for the 2024/25 financial year, as shown in the Financial Statements.

Table 12 - Total staff costs

	2024/25	2023/24
Wages and salaries	45,085	41,663
Social security costs	5,189	4,763
Other pension costs	12,847	11,148
Sub Total	63,121	57,574
Agency staff	359	1,067
Total net staff costs	63,480	58,641

Pension benefits

Pension benefits are provided through the Civil Service pension arrangements. From 1 April 2015 a new pension scheme for civil servants was introduced – the Civil Servants and Others Pension Scheme or ‘Alpha’, which provides benefits on a career average basis with a normal pension age equal to the member’s State Pension Age (or 65 if higher). From that date all newly appointed civil servants and the majority of those already in service joined Alpha. Prior to that date, civil servants participated in the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme (PCSPS). The PCSPS has four sections: three providing benefits on a final salary basis (Classic, Premium or Classic plus) with a normal pension age of 60; and one providing benefits on a whole career basis (Nuvos) with a normal pension age of 65.

These statutory arrangements are unfunded with the cost of benefits met by monies voted by Parliament each year. Pensions payable under Classic, Premium, Classic plus, Novos and Alpha are increased annually in line with Pensions Increase legislation. Existing members of the PCSPS who were within 10 years of their normal pension age on 1 April 2012 remained in the PCSPS after 1 April 2015. Those who were between 10 years and 13 years and 5 months from their normal pension age on 1 April 2012 switch into Alpha sometime between 1 June 2015 and 1 February 2022. Because the government plans to remove discrimination identified by the courts in the way that the 2015 pension reforms were introduced for some members, eligible members with relevant service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 may be entitled to different pension benefits in relation to that period (and this may affect the Cash Equivalent Transfer Values shown in this report. All members who switch to Alpha have their PCSPS benefits ‘banked’, with those with earlier benefits in one of the final salary sections of the PCSPS having those benefits based on their final salary when they leave Alpha. Members joining from October 2002 may opt for either the appropriate defined benefit arrangement or a defined contribution (money purchase) pension with an employer contribution (partnership pension account). Further details about the Civil Service pension arrangements can be found at the website https://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk.

For 2024/25, employers’ contributions of £12,718,917 were payable to the pension scheme (2023/24: £11,048,752) at 28.97% (2023/24: one of four rates 26.6% to 30.3%) of pensionable pay based on salary bands. The Scheme Actuary reviews employer contributions usually every four years following a full scheme valuation. The contribution rates are set to meet the cost of the benefits accruing during 2024/25 to be paid when the member retires and not the benefits paid during this period to existing pensioners.

Employees can opt to open a partnership pension account, a stakeholder pension with an employer contribution. Employer contributions of £64,825 (2023/24: £41,360) were paid to one or more of the panel of three appointed stakeholder pension providers. Employer contributions are age-related and range from 8% to 14.75% of pensionable earnings. Employers also match employee contributions up to 3% of pensionable earnings. In addition, employer contributions of 0.5% (of pensionable pay for those employees) were payable to the pension Scheme to cover the cost of the future provision of lump-sum benefits on death in service or ill-health retirement of these employees (March 2025 monthly payment £253 (March 2024: £213)). Contributions due to the partnership pension providers at 31 March 2025 were £5,895 (2023/24: £4,751). Contributions prepaid at that date were £nil (2023/24: £nil). Nil persons (2023/24: two) retired early on ill-health grounds.

Expenditure on consultancy and contingent labour

In 2024/25, the Planning Inspectorate incurred £21,600 (2023/24: zero spend) on contracts which were categorised as consultancy. The three contracts were for expertise to provide strategic advice and recommendations on critical matters including pay/reward and the effectiveness of our Board. All contracts were less than £20k so were not in scope of our internal spend review process.

Our total contingent labour spend for 2024/25 was £6,828,732 (2023/24: £4,278,169), across three main categories:

• Agency staff – used to temporarily fill vacancies whilst we recruit and provide additional resource if needed;

• Specialist technical support – providing technical skills and resource where the capability and/or the capacity is not available in-house; and

• Planning Appeal Decision Services – flexible inspector resource engaged on a fee per case basis through a dynamic purchasing system as and when work is available.

No contracts for contingent labour were in the scope of Cabinet Office spend controls. In addition to the spend explained in this section, the Inspectorate contracted for specialist resources and expertise through several service-based contracts, including but not limited to our Cyber Security as a Service and Data Capability as a Service contracts.

Off-payroll engagements

We engaged in off-payroll contracts (see the following tables for further analysis) across a range of professional disciplines including digital, data, finance, HR, communications and commercial. The engagements supported specific need in the organisation while transforming the organisation or backfilling vacancies in our establishment. This year, we have worked further towards reducing the use of contingent labour where possible and appropriate.

In May 2024, an audit on our IR35 decision making processes was completed by the Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) and we received an overall substantive opinion that adequate and effective governance, risk management and control is in place.

Table 13 - Off-payroll engagements

Highly paid off-payroll worker engagements as at 31 March 2025, earning £245 per day or greater

Highly paid off-payroll worker engagements as at 31 March 2025, earning £245 per day or greater	As at March 2025
Number of existing engagements.	19
Of which…
Number that have existed for less than one year at time of reporting.	16
Number that have existed for between one and two years at time of reporting.	3
Number that have existed for between two and three years at time of reporting.	-
Number that have existed for between three and four years at time of reporting.	-
Number that have existed for four or more years at time of reporting.	-

All the existing off-payroll engagements outlined above have been subject to a risk based assessment to determine whether they are inside or outside the scope of the Inland Revenue legislation 35 (IR35) intermediaries.

Table 14 - Off-payroll workers engaged during the year

All highly paid off-payroll workers engaged at any point during the year ended 31 March 2025, earning £245 per day or greater	As at March 2025
Number of temporary off-payroll workers engaged during the year ended 31 March 2025.	25
Of which…
Not subject to off-payroll legislation.	-
Subject to off-payroll legislation and determined as in-scope of IR35.	25
Subject to off-payroll legislation and determined as out-of-scope of IR35.	-
Number of engagements reassessed for consistency/assurance purposes during the year.	18
Of which: Number of engagements that saw a change to IR35 status following the consistency review.	-

Table 15 - Off-payroll engagements of Board members and senior officials

Any off-payroll engagements of Board members, and/or, senior officials with significant financial responsibility, between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025	As at March 2025
Number of off-payroll engagements of Board members, and/or senior officials with significant financial responsibility, during the financial year.	-
Total number of individuals on payroll and off-payroll that have been deemed ‘board members, and/or senior officials with significant financial responsibility’, during the financial year. This figure should include both on-payroll and off-payroll engagements.	7

Exit packages

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

Exit costs are accounted for in full either in the year of departure or, where a binding commitment is made to leave in the subsequent year, costs are accrued.

There were no exit costs incurred for staff departures in 2024/25 (2023/24: one less than £100,000).

Table 16 - Breakdown of Departure Costs

		Core Dept			Core Dept. & Agencies			Departmental Group
Exit package cost band	No. of compulsory redundancies	No. of other departures agreed	Total number of exit packages by cost band	No. of compulsory redundancies	No. of other departures agreed	Total number of exit packages by cost band	No. of compulsory redundancies	No. of other departures agreed	Total number of exit packages by cost band
<£10,000	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
£10,000 - £25,000	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
£25,000 - £50,000	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
£50,000 - £100,000	-	Nil (One)	Nil (One)	-	Nil (One)	Nil (One)	-	Nil (One)	Nil (One)
£100,000 - £150,000	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
£150,000 - £200,000	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Total number of exit packages	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Total cost /£	-	£0 (£96, 703)	£0 (£96, 703)	-	£0 (£96, 703)	£0 (£96, 703)	-	£0 (£96, 703)	£0 (£96, 703)

Redundancy and other departure costs have been paid in accordance with the provisions of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, a statutory scheme made under the Superannuation Act 1972. Exit costs are accounted for in full in the year of departure. Where the department has agreed early retirements, the additional costs are met by the department and not by the Civil Service pension scheme. Ill-health retirement costs are met by the pension scheme and are not included in the table.

Consultations in 2024/25

We conducted an extensive range of consultation to support improvements to the organisation and the delivery of its aims. We have consulted on:

• Adoption Leave and Pay

• Maternity Leave and Pay

• Probation

• Miscarriage Guidance

• Baby and Child Loss Guidance

• Workplace adjustments

• Homeworking and provision of furniture.

Parliamentary Accountability and Audit Report

This section provides the detailed disclosures we are required to make under the corporate governance in central departments: code of good practice and is supported by the detail in the Financial Statements of this Annual Report.

Budget Allocations and Out-turn

The Planning Inspectorate is funded through the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. Initial indicative allocations are agreed as part of HM Treasury Spending Review exercises and are refined annually as necessary through the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government business planning round. Since 1st April 2020, we are fully funded from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government programme budgets and this classification of our funding is reviewed annually.

The detailed accounts for financial year 2024-25 are included in the ‘Financial Statements’ part of this publication. A brief summary of our performance against budget is provided in Table 17.

During the year we managed our financial performance against budget across four main headings: staff and related costs; non-pay running costs; income; and capital. The agreed budget at the supplementary estimates was £86.0m revenue, £(18.0)m income and £11.5m capital. Our outturn for 2024/25 was £78.6m revenue expenditure, £(22.3)m income, £10.8m capital and £0.4m annually managed expenditure.

The underspend in revenue was predominantly due to a reduction in Programme activity £(5.4) m, departing Temple Quay House (see Note 10), reducing contingency £(1.0)m and reduced depreciation £(0.8)m. The increase in income was due to introducing the new pre-application service £(2.2)m and completing a larger volume of casework than anticipated. A more detailed analysis of financial performance is provided in the Financial Performance section of this document.

During 2024/25 the total value of adverse costs paid out was £0.6m with £0.5m of costs awarded to the Planning Inspectorate. This amounted to 108 cases in total including 38 refused, 14 won and 8 lost with 48 outstanding (13 of which relate to prior year cases).

Table 17 - 2024/25 Budget, outturn and underspend

	Original budget	Revised budget	Outturn	Underspend
	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000
Staff & related costs	64,522	64,071	63,480	(591)
Non-pay running costs	4,969	18,277	12,854	(5,423)
Receipts	(12,574)	(18,000)	(22,321)	(4,321)
Net costs	56,917	64,348	54,013	(10,335)
Ring-fenced costs	14,509	3,136	2,358	(778)
Total programme costs	71,426	67,484	56,371	(11,113)
Non-cash costs (Annually Managed Expenditure - AME)	700	516	426	(90)
Total operating expenditure	72,126	68,000	56,797	(11,203)
Capital expenditure	13,950	11,494	10,808	(686)

Table 18 shows the funding delegated to the Planning Inspectorate for financial year 2025/26 by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Table 18 - Current provisional allocations

	2025/26
	£’000
Net costs	75,200
Ring-fenced costs	4,700
Total programme costs	79,900
Annually managed expenditure	200
Total operating expenditure	80,100
Capital expenditure	15,000
Total budget	95,100

Fees and charges

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

We have complied with the cost allocation and charging requirements set out in HM Treasury and Office of Public Sector Information guidance for fees and charges. Casework for which total fees exceed £1m are analysed below (see Note 2 for restatement explanation).

Table 19 - Income and costs for casework activity

		2024/25			2023/24 Restated
	Cost £’000	Income £’000	Net £’000	Cost £’000	Income £’000	Net £’000
National infrastructure	18,829	(16,728)	2,101	20,123	(11,515)	8,608
Local plans	3,864	(2,943)	921	3,394	(2,179)	1,215
Other Major Specialist casework	3,433	(1,683)	1,750	3,264	(1,515)	1,749
Totals	26,126	(21,354)	4,772	26,781	(15,209)	11,572

Costs include an element of pre-application work which occurs before the point on income recognition, so costs and associated income can span different financial years. The costs of Other Major Specialist Casework are only partially recovered from the work we undertake on behalf of other government departments.

Regularity of expenditure

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

Expenditure on losses and special payments, as defined in Managing Public Money guidance, is reported to HM Treasury through the parent Department.

Details of cases over £300,000: there was one reportable case in 2024/25 in connection with the occupation of Temple Quay House. There were two components to this case, namely:

• The write off of the Temple Quay House right of use asset as described in Note 10 to the accounts, this amounted to £460k (following the £1,247k impairment in 2023/24).

• A fruitless payment of £0.8m, which was included in the accommodation costs. This was offset by a £1.1m credit from the Government Property Agency as described in Note 16 Events after the reporting period.

There were 61 losses and special payment cases: seven cases were between £10,000 and £299,999; all other cases below £10,000. This included: ex gratia payments, damage to hire cars, other compensation payments, and overpayment write-offs.

Remote contingent liabilities

This section of the document has been subject to audit.

Ex Gratia costs are non-statutory payments, generally made as a result of an acknowledged error causing unnecessary expenditure for the claimant. This can include cases where maladministration is found by the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The Planning Inspectorate calculates a contingent liability to recognise; the potential costs for claims received that are too immature to be included in the accounts, and for claims relating to work completed prior to 31 March 2025 where the case is yet to be raised.

Due to the nature of the Ex Gratia claims, there is the remote possibility that we receive claims for work completed prior to the 31 March 2025 that exceed the contingent liability recognised in the accounts. In this instance we would seek additional funding from MHCLG as part of our spending review submissions.

Paul Morrison, Chief Executive 20 June 2025

Financial Statements for the year ended 31 March 2025

The format and content of the financial statements in this section are in accordance with relevant HM Treasury guidance.

Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure

		2024/25	As Restated 2023/24
	Note	£’000	£’000
Other operating income		(22,321)	(16,081)
Operating income	4	(22,321)	(16,081)
Staff costs	3a	63,480	58,641
Depreciation charges		2,358	1,133
Right-of-use asset impairment	3b	459	1,247
Right-of-use liability reinstatement	3b	(907)	0
Finance Costs		12	37
Provision expense		(70)	100
Other administrative costs	3b	13,786	14,182
Total operating expenditure		79,118	75,339
Net expenditure for the year		56,797	59,258
Other comprehensive net expenditure
Net gain/loss on revaluation		0	0
Comprehensive net expenditure for the year		56,797	59,258

All the Planning Inspectorate’s income and expenditure for the year was derived from continuing activities.

The Notes form part of these accounts. Details of restatement in Note 17

Statement of Financial Position

	Note	31 March 2025 £’000	As Restated 31 March 2024 £’000
Non-current assets
Property, plant and equipment	5	1,085	1,268
Right-of-use assets	10	269	459
Intangible assets	6	35,124	26,831
Prepayments greater than one year	7	40	60
Total non-current assets		36,518	28,618
Trade and other receivables	7	6,028	3,416
Cash and cash equivalents	8	13,455	12,334
Total current assets		19,483	15,750
Total assets		56,001	44,368
Trade and other payables	9	(9,339)	(9,577)
Lease liabilities	10	(1,356)	(841)
Provisions	13	(31)	(101)
Total current liabilities		(10,726)	(10,519)
Lease liabilities	10	0	(676)
Total non-current liabilities		-	(676)
Total liabilities		(10,726)	(11,195)
Assets less liabilities		45,275	33,173
General fund		45,275	33,173
Total taxpayers’ equity		45,275	33,173

The Notes form part of these accounts. Details of restatement in note 17

The accounts were approved by the Inspectorate’s Board on 5 June 2025 and signed on its behalf by:

Paul Morrison, Chief Executive 20 June 2025

Statement of Cash Flows

	Note	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Cash flows from operating activities
Net operating expenditure		(56,797)	(58,011)
Adjustments for non-cash transactions	3b, 4	2,199	1,547
Movement in trade and other receivables	7	(2,591)	910
Movement in Bad Debt Provisions	3b	(35)	(95)
Movement in trade and other payables	9	57	1,998
Use of provisions	13	(55)	-
Interest paid	10	12	37
Net cash outflow from operating activities		(57,210)	(53,614)
Cash flows from investing activities
Purchase of property, plant and equipment	5	(397)	(173)
Purchase of intangible assets	6	(9,752)	(10,669)
Sale of Property, Plant & Equipment
Net cash outflow from investing activities		(10,149)	(10,842)
Cash flows from financing activities
Funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government		68,700	69,100
Payments to right-of-use buildings lease		(220)	(448)
Net cashflow from financing activities		68,480	68,652
Net (decrease)/increase in cash and cash equivalents in the period	8	1,121	4,196
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the period	8	12,334	8,138
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period	8	13,455	12,334

The Notes form part of these accounts.

Statement of Changes in Taxpayers’ Equity

	Note	General fund £’000
Balance at 31 March 2023		23,134
Changes in Taxpayers’ Equity for 2023/24
Total comprehensive expenditure		(59,258)
Non-cash charges – auditor’s remuneration	3b	67
Notional charges	3b	130
Funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government		69,100
Balance at 31 March 2024		33,173
Changes in Taxpayers’ Equity for 2024/25
Total comprehensive expenditure		(56,797)
Non-cash charges – auditor’s remuneration	3b	69
Notional charges	3b	130
Funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government		68,700
Balance at 31 March 2025		45,275

The Notes form part of these accounts.

Notes to the Accounts

Note 1. Statement of accounting policies and estimates

Note 1.1 Accounting policies

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the 2024-25 Government Financial Reporting Manual (FReM) issued by HM Treasury. The accounting policies contained in the Financial Reporting Manual apply International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as adapted or interpreted for the public sector context. Where the Financial Reporting Manual permits a choice of accounting policy, the accounting policy which is judged to be most appropriate to the particular circumstances of the Inspectorate for the purpose of giving a true and fair view has been selected. The particular policies that we adopted are described below. They have been applied consistently in dealing with items considered material in relation to the accounts.

Note 1.1a Accounting convention

These accounts have been prepared under the historical cost convention.

Note 1.1b Accounting estimates and judgements

The preparation of financial information in conformance with the International Financial Reporting Standards requires the use of certain accounting estimates. It also requires management to exercise its judgement in the process of applying the accounting policies. The key accounting estimates and judgements are accruals (see Note 9), right of use assets (see Note 10), contingent liabilities (see Note 11) and provisions (see Note 13). Estimates are based on known information within the business and past trends.

Note 1.1c Value added tax

Most of the Planning Inspectorate’s activities were outside the scope of VAT and, in general, output tax does not apply and input tax on purchases is not recoverable, other than under the terms of the HM Treasury Direction under section 41(3) Value Added Tax Act 1994. Irrecoverable VAT is charged to the relevant expenditure category or included in the capitalised purchase cost of fixed assets. Where output tax is charged, or input VAT is recoverable the amounts are stated net of VAT.

We are not separately registered for VAT but operate under the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’ VAT registration.

Note 1.1d Operating income

Income is recognised when a performance obligation is satisfied e.g. by providing a service to a customer. The provision of services is by reference to time spent on casework. For casework, such as local plan examinations, which can span financial years, income is calculated on the work completed to the end of the financial year and accrued on a pro-rata day rate basis. We are not disclosing the value of outstanding performance obligations as our contracts with customers are charged at a fixed rate that directly relates to the work completed to date. There are no significant financing arrangements and payment terms are within 30 days from receipt of invoice. The main services offered can be seen within the segmental analysis in Note 2 of the Financial Statements which describe the service areas and income received.

Note 1.1e Lease Accounting Policy & Right-of-use Assets

With effect from the financial year 2022-23 leases which meet the definition of a right of use asset are accounted for under the standard IFRS16 Leases. This replaced the guidance provided in IAS17 and IFRIC4. In accordance with IFRS16 the lease of Temple Quay House, The Planning Inspectorate former headquarters, and Runway East, the current office premises have been assessed as a right of use asset– see Note 10 for details of the specific treatments.

Where a lease is in scope of IFRS 16, the Planning Inspectorate recognises a right of use asset and corresponding lease liability.

The right of use assets are initially measured at cost, which comprises the present value of unavoidable future lease payments, adjusted for any initial direct costs, prepayments or incentives and an estimate of any repair or restoration costs. The right of use asset is depreciated over the shorter of the asset’s useful life and the lease term on a straight-line basis. Depreciation expenditure is recorded in the SOCNE.

Right of use assets are tested for impairment in accordance with IAS 36 Impairment of Assets.

Lease liabilities are measured at amortised cost using the effective interest method, with interest expense recognised in the SOCNE under finance costs. We have used the government incremental borrowing rate as promulgated by HM Treasury in order to calculate the interest expense.

Where leases that are determined to be right of use assets are of low value, or where the term ends within 12 months, the Planning Inspectorate applies the short term or low value exemption mandated by the FReM. This has been applied to the Engine Shed lease.

All existing contracts were assessed against IFRS16 on implementation of the standard in April 2022. All new contracts are assessed against the standard before contract award.

Note 1.1f Notional costs

In accordance with the FReM, notional costs at the appropriate rate are included for audit fees and for services provided by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which have an equal reversing credit in the Statement of changes in taxpayers’ equity. Additionally, notional costs in both income and expenditure reflect the use of the apprenticeship levy.

Note 1.1g Property, plant and equipment

Property, plant and equipment are stated at fair value using depreciated historic cost. On initial recognition they are measured at cost including any directly attributable costs to bring them into working condition. Property, plant and equipment is not revalued, as using indices published by the Office for National Statistics appropriate to the category of asset, the difference in value would be immaterial. Assets still in use beyond the standard useful life period will be extended or remain at nil book value if appropriate.

The minimum level for capitalisation of property, plant and equipment is £5,000, and £5,000 for aggregated items. Items falling below this value are charged as an expense and shown in the Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure.

Note 1.1h Depreciation

Property, plant and equipment are depreciated at rates calculated to write off the assets over their estimated useful lives on a straight-line basis, as follows:

Information Technology (Strategic IT) 4 years to 5 years.

New IT hardware and associated peripherals purchased as a bundle are capitalised on acquisition, with any replacements to peripherals arising during the four-year lifespan expensed to revenue expenditure to ensure depreciation is not double counted.

Note 1.1i Intangible assets

Intangible assets comprise the capitalised value of systems developed in-house or bought-in software, software licenses and systems under development. Intangible assets are valued at cost less amortisation and impairment. Intangible assets are not revalued; the organisation considers the amortised historic cost basis of valuation is not materially different from fair value. New in-house software assets are under construction relating to the appeals service and an occupational data warehouse, these will be amortised once brought into use.

Note 1.1j Amortisation and impairment

Intangible assets are amortised at rates calculated to write off the assets over their estimated useful lives on a straight-line basis, as follows:

Internally-generated software 8 years

Assets are amortised from the point at which the asset is brought into use. Amortisation is charged as an expense and shown in the Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure.

Note 1.1k Accrued income and trade receivables

Accrued income is included for services provided but not invoiced as at 31 March 2025. Trade receivables are included where services have been provided and invoiced but not paid. Revenue is recognised in accordance with IFRS 15 Revenue from contracts with customers as detailed in Note 1.1d.

Note 1.1l Provisions

The Planning Inspectorate provides for legal or constructive obligations which are of uncertain timing or amount at the Statement of Financial Position date, based on the best estimate of the expenditure required to settle the obligation. After reviewing obligations no new costs have been provided for in financial year 2024/25 (£100,491 2023-24).

Note 1.1m Segmental reporting

The Planning Inspectorate, as an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, reports under only one operating segment: Building better homes. It is therefore felt more appropriate to base the segmental analysis on major areas of casework based on the internal reporting structure. The assets and liabilities have not been included in the segmental analysis as they are not apportioned but used across the organisation (see Note 2).

Note 1.1n Financial instruments

As our cash requirements are met through the Estimate process, financial instruments play a more limited role in creating and managing risk than would apply to a non-public sector body. Financial instruments relate to contracts to buy non-financial items in line with our expected purchase and usage requirements and we are therefore exposed to little credit, liquidity or market risk.

Note 1.1o Accounting standards and interpretations not yet adopted

The following standards, amendments and interpretations have been issued but are not yet effective:

	Change published	Published by International Accounting Standards Board	Financial year for which the change first applies
	IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts	May 2017	To be implementation on 1st April 2025
	IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements	December 2019	Public Sector Implementation is expected 1st April 2028

The Planning Inspectorate has assessed IFRS17 Insurance Contracts, in the context of our activities and has concluded that it does not apply at present. Therefore, no actions or disclosures are required in respect of this standard. All new contracts will be reviewed against the standard.

A further new standard IFRS18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements, is expected to be introduced from the 1st April 2028. The Planning Inspectorate will undertake a detailed review of the requirements of the standard. Following an initial assessment, it is unlikely that material additional disclosures will be required.

Note 1.1p Going concern

In common with other government departments, the future financing of our liabilities is met by resource approved annually by Parliament. Funding for FY25/26 has been approved and confirmed via the delegation letter sent to the Planning Inspectorate from MHCLG in April 2025. Additional levels of budgetary spend has been secured through the Spending Review process for future years to the end of FY29/30. The Inspectorate delivers government policy in relation to housing and national infrastructure, this is a key part of government policy and there is no indication that this will change. The Directors’ going concern assessment covers the period of 12 months from the date of the approval of these financial statements. For these reasons, the accounts have been prepared on a going concern basis.

Note 1.1q Liquidity risk

Liquidity risk is the risk that an entity will encounter difficulty in meeting obligations associated with financial liabilities. As the cash requirements of the group are largely met through the Estimates process and central government’s ability to borrow to raise funds, there is minimal liquidity risk.

Note 1.1r Legislative authority for producing accounts

The legislative authority for producing the accounts is the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000.

The Planning Inspectorate operates as an executive agency under the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

As part of our three public services, we examine the soundness of local plans, determine a range of appeals and applications, and make recommendations on Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects. In Wales, where planning is a devolved matter, we also make recommendations on Developments of National Significance.

The planning system within which we operate is described as plan-led and is defined by a number of Acts. Four key pieces of legislation are particularly significant for our work. These are:

• The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, covers the local plans system, as well as the statutory duty to determine planning applications and appeals in accordance with the 106 Performance Accountability Financial Return to contents Planning Inspectorate Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25 development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise.

• The Town and Country Planning Act 1990, covers the right to appeal for planning, enforcement, and lawful development certificate cases, as well as our ability to determine the procedure for a variety of case types.

• The Planning Act 2008, covers the consenting regime for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects in England. It also includes some limited provisions relevant to Wales, that are separate from the Developments of National Significance.

• The Planning (Wales) Act 2015 covering the Developments of National Significance regime in Wales.

Other Acts and related legislation cover Listed Buildings and other, less common, areas of our work, such as rights of way, and environmental appeals

Note 2. Statement of operating costs by segment

We report based on the segmental analysis on major areas of casework and other significant income and expenditure categories using the unit cost model. Actual hours worked are booked to all cases worked on in the financial year.

		2024/25			2023/24
	Cost £’000	Income £’000	Net £’000	Cost £’000	Income £’000	Net £’000
Planning appeals	41,343	-	41,343	38,469	-	38,469
National infrastructure	18,829	(16,728)	2,101	20,123	(11,515)	8,608
Local plans	3,864	(2,943)	921	3,394	(2,179)	1,215
Enforcement appeals	7,035	-	7,035	6,550	-	6,550
Rights of Way	1,663	-	1,663	1,257	-	1,257
Compulsory purchase orders	370	(130)	240	405	(252)	153
Other Major Specialist Casework	3,433	(1,683)	1,750	3,264	(1,515)	1,749
Other	2,581	(837)	1,744	1,877	(620)	1,257
Totals	79,118	(22,321)	56,797	75,339	(16,081)	59,258
Total net expenditure per the Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure			56,797			59,258

The assets and liabilities have not been included in the segmental analysis as they are used across the organisation and are not apportioned or reported in this way to senior leadership.

The Planning Inspectorate receives most of its funding from Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government but approximately 28% of its costs in 2024/25 (21% in 2023/24) have been recovered by charging a mixture of other central government departments, local government bodies or private individuals and businesses.

Description of segments

1. Planning Appeals: This covers the usual planning appeals affecting householders, advertisements and minor commercial appeals.

2. National infrastructure: This relates to work undertaken on large-scale proposals that support the economy, and vital public services, including railways, energy generation stations, harbours and airports. In October 2024 the Planning Inspectorate began charging for the pre-application stage of national infrastructure projects. This means that costs are no longer incurred before the income is recognised.

3. Local plans: This covers work undertaken in relation to examination of local planning authorities’ local plans.

4. Enforcement appeals: This is where an appeal is made against enforcement notices when a development is carried out without planning permission or not in accordance with an approved planning application.

5. Rights of way: This is work undertaken in reviewing orders regarding rights of way.

6. Compulsory purchase orders: This is work undertaken in respect of objections received in relation to a compulsory purchase order.

7. Other major specialist casework: This covers work undertaken on behalf of other government departments. These costs are only partially recovered from the work we undertake on behalf of other government departments.

8. Other: This covers all other casework not listed above and includes making cost decisions arising mainly from withdrawn appeals/enforcement notices and making decisions on Purchase Notice appeals.

Note 3. Operating expenditure

Note 3a. Staff costs Remuneration for Directors

Remuneration for Directors is included in Staff costs with further detail in the Remuneration Report.

Staff costs - Staff costs comprise:

	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Wages and salaries	45,085	41,663
Social security costs	5,189	4,763
Other pension costs	12,847	11,148
Sub Total	63,121	57,574
Agency staff	359	1,067
Total net staff costs	63,480	58,641

Note 3b. Other administrative costs

Auditor’s remuneration Represents the notional audit fee in respect of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s annual certification of the Planning Inspectorate’s financial statements. There was no remuneration due for non-audit work.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government recharges are for the supply of accounting and human resources services.

Other administration costs include professional fees, publications, subscriptions, safety equipment, recruitment services and translation services.

	Note	2024/25 - £’000	2023/24 - £’000
Rentals:
Hire of plant and machinery		430	362
Other payments formerly classified as operating leases under IAS17 (note 1.1e)		134	120
Total		564	482
Interest charges	10	12	37
Non-cash items:
Depreciation	5, 10	716	1,114
Amortisation	6	1,642	18
Right of Use asset impairment	10	459	1,247
Right of Use liability impairment write up	10	(907)	-
Provision for doubtful debt		35	95
Loss on disposal of asset	5	71	22
Auditor’s remuneration		69	67
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government recharges		130	130
Apprenticeship Levy Training Services		161	94
In-year increase in provision	13	-	101
Write-back of provision	13	(15)	-
Total		2,361	2,888
Other expenditure:
Planning Appeals Decision Services		1,637	1,562
Travel, subsistence and hospitality		2,319	2,479
Accommodation costs		38	1,211
Legal and professional services		2,363	1,974
Support Services		1,334	982
Information Technology		2,612	2,176
Ex gratia costs		234	216
Adverse costs		529	601
Bad debts and write offs		(114)	140
Telecoms		110	122
Training and conferences		376	504
Postal services		168	196
Office supplies		175	204
Other administration costs		920	924
Total		12,701	13,291
Total administrative costs		15,638	16,698

Note 4. Operating income

	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Fees and charges
Local plans	2,943	2,179
National infrastructure	16,728	11,515
Compulsory purchase orders	130	252
Other major specialist casework	1,683	1,515
Total Fees and charges	21,484	15,461
Recovery of adverse costs	634	526
Other	42	-
Total Miscellaneous income	676	526
Total Miscellaneous notional income	161	94
Total Operating income	22,321	16,081

The increase in operating income in financial year 2024-25 is predominantly due to income received from Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects. £0.9m was due to the inflation of fees, £2.1m was due to an increase of casework and the remaining £2.2m was generated by the new pre-application service.

Note 5. Property, plant and equipment

The Property, Plant and Equipment at the Planning Inspectorate relates to Digital equipment purchased to support staff working in the office, from home, or out on casework. Property identified as right-of-use assets under IFRS16 are reported under Note X.

2024/25	Information Technology £’000
Cost or valuation
At 1 April 2024	4,392
Additions	379
Disposals	(450)
Revaluation	-
Impairment	-
At 31 March 2025	4,321
Depreciation
At 1 April 2024	3,125
Charged in year	491
Disposals	(380)
At 31 March 2025	3,236
Net book value at 31 March 2025	1,085
Net book value at 31 March 2024	1,267
Asset financing
Owned at 31 March 2025	1,085

2023/24	Information Technology £’000
Cost or valuation
At 1 April 2023	4,395
Additions	167
Disposals	(170)
Revaluation	-
Impairment	-
At 31 March 2024	4,392
Depreciation
At 1 April 2023	2,827
Charged in year	446
Disposals	(148)
At 31 March 2024	3,125
Net book value at 31 March 2024	1,267
Net book value at 31 March 2023	1,568
Asset financing
Owned at 31 March 2024	1,267
Right of use asset at 31 March 2024	-

Note 6. Intangible assets

The Planning Inspectorate has been investing in its digital infrastructure to build new casework management systems and accompanying citizen facing portals for data and document submission. The first of these assets, relating to Nationally Significant Infrastructure projects went live in March 2024 and is now in operation. The second of these assets is for Appeals and is reported under assets under construction.

In the spring, the government released The Town and Country Planning Crown Order 2025. The additions in financial year 2024/25 include expenditure to develop a new portal in support of Crown Development applications.

Intangible assets comprise the capitalised value of systems developed in-house or bought-in software, software licences and systems under development.

The in year additions consist of the total value of in-year costs of our internally generated Digital public service portal including directly attributable goods and services for work completed during the year ended 31 March 2025.

Intangible assets are valued at cost less amortisation and impairment.

A key accounting judgement is that Intangible assets are not revalued; the organisation considers the amortised historic cost basis of valuation is not materially different from fair value. New in-house software assets are under construction relating to the appeals service and an operational data warehouse, these will be amortised once brought into use.

Internally Generated Information Technology

2024/25	Asset under construction £’000	In operation £’000	Total £’000
Cost or valuation
At 1 April 2024	16,110	12,259	28,369
Additions	7,640	2,295	9,934
Reclassification	-	-	-
At 31 March 2025	23,750	14,554	38,304
Amortisation
At 1 April 2024	-	1,538	1,538
Charged in year	-	1,642	1,642
Disposals	-	-	-
At 31 March 2025	-	3,180	3,180
Net book value at 31 March 2025	23,750	11,374	35,124
Net book value at 31 March 2024	16,110	10,721	26,831
Asset financing
Owned at 31 March 2025	23,750	11,374	35,124

2023/24	Asset under construction £’000	In operation £’000	Total £’000
Cost or valuation
At 1 April 2023	16,544	1,567	18,111
Additions	9,957	301	10,258
Reclassifications	(10,391)	10,391	-
At 31 March 2024	16,110	12,259	28,369
Amortisation
At 1 April 2023	-	1,520	1,520
Charged in year	-	18	18
Disposals	-	-	-
At 31 March 2024	-	1,538	1,538
Net book value at 31 March 2024	16,110	10,721	26,831
Net book value at 31 March 2023	16,544	47	16,591
Asset financing
Owned at 31 March 2024	16,110	10,721	26,831

Note 7. Trade receivables and other current assets

Other receivables include balances due from organisations and other government departments which are not in relation to regular fee-based work and various payroll advances and recoveries.

Amounts falling due within one year	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Trade receivables (Contract)	2,138	1,564
Other receivables - VAT	91	122
Other receivables - Other	623	449
Doubtful Debt provision	(412)	(499)
Prepayments	1,346	852
Accrued income	2,242	928
Total	6,028	3,416
Prepayments falling due after one year	40	60
Total	6,068	3,476

The value of accruals has increased since 2023-24. This is due to the system upgrade of our financial systems at the end of March 2025. The system closed to users in the middle of March to allow for system migration. As a result, processing of invoices was postponed until April and the finance team raised a larger number of manual accruals to recognise work completed. No receivables are currently past their due date. The reduction in the doubtful debt provision is due to the eventual recovery of outstanding debt.

Doubtful Debt Provision Analysis	As at 31 March 2024	Bad debt recovered during 24/25	Additional in year provision	As at 31 March 2025
Amounts falling due within one year	(499)	122	(35)	(412)

Note 8. Cash and cash equivalents

	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Balance at 1 April	12,334	8,138
Net change in cash and cash equivalent balances	1,121	4,196
Balance at 31 March	13,455	12,334

Note 9. Trade payables and other current liabilities

Amounts falling due within one year	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Trade payables	1	126
Other payables - VAT, taxation and social security	1,346	1,223
Other payables - including payroll deductions	1,651	1,374
Accruals	6,124	5,751
Deferred Income	217	1,103
Provisions	31	100
Current part of lease liabilities	1,356	841
Total	10,726	10,518
Amounts falling due after more than one year
Leases	0	676
Total payables at 31 March	10,726	11,194

Note 10. Right-of-use assets

In financial year 2024-25 the Planning Inspectorate identified three leases:

1. Temple Quay House,

2. Engine Shed,

3. Runway East.

Temple Quay House

The Planning Inspectorate determined that the lease of its headquarters in Bristol, Temple Quay House constituted a right of use asset under the definitions contained within the accounting standard IFRS16 Right of Use Assets. The anticipated rental values for the lease from 1st April 2022 to the first rent review 31st March 2026 were capitalised.

During this period the property was undergoing refurbishment. In financial year 2023-24 changes to the scope of refurbishment works caused two accounting adjustments:

1. Revaluation: We were required to pay full rent until re-occupation of the building at which time we would occupy a smaller floor area. On 29th November 2023 we were informed of an elongation to the refurbishment programme. The right of use asset was revalued as the net increase of future rental payments less implied interest.

2. Impairment: On the 8th January 2024 access to the building was withdrawn by the Government Procurement Agency in order to carry out major works in our area of the building and an impairment was recognised. An asset was still deemed to exist on the basis that we would be in full occupation for the last six months of the original capitalisation period.

Notwithstanding the impairment to the asset, the Planning Inspectorate remained liable to the Government Property Agency for the rental throughout the period of the refurbishment, this being so, whilst the asset had been impaired the liability was not.

On 5th November 2024 we received notice from the Government Property Agency stating that they would no longer provide space for the Planning Inspectorate post refurbishment, terminating our lease with them effective from the 31st December 2024. At this point the Planning Inspectorate wrote off the Right of Use asset relating to Temple Quay House. The decision to end the contract was made by the Government Procurement Agency rather than the Planning Inspectorate and therefore the balance was charged to Annually Managed Expenditure.

It should be noted that the Planning Inspectorate has been withholding invoices received from the Government Property Agency since the end Q2 2023-24 when the office was no longer considered safe and negotiations began.

In May 2025 the Planning Inspectorate received a settlement offer from the Government Property Agency which has been accepted. The Government Property Agency has recognised the additional expense incurred by the Planning Inspectorate in securing additional office accommodation and will raise a credit note to cover these costs.

This settlement is considered a significant post year event, and the accounts have been adjusted as follows:

• The accrual for rates, facilities management and landlord services have been reduced in line with the settlement offer.

• The agreed settlement and the credit note have been written-off to annually managed expenditure as no service was received whilst the office was unoccupied.

• The right-of-use liability has been adjusted to reflect the total rent owed since 1st October 2023. The difference in the obligation has been charged to Annually Managed Expenditure as it is considered an event outside of our control.

Engine Shed

In financial year 2023-24 the Planning Inspectorate entered a lease at Engine Shed, Bristol for temporary office space during the refurbishment of Temple Quay House from the 4th September 2023 to the 3rd September 2024. Due to the length of the lease period not exceeding 12 months, Engine Shed was not recognised as a lease under IFRS16 and has been expensed in the accounts. The Planning Inspectorate left the premises at the end of August 2024.

Runway East

In financial year 2024-25 the Planning Inspectorate entered a new lease at Runway East, Bristol to replace the accommodation at Engine Shed. Runway East provided additional office space allowing more staff to return to the office. The Planning Inspectorate determined that this lease constituted a right of use asset under the accounting standard IFRS16. The lease contract was fixed term from the 15th July 2024 to the 31st January 2026.

In October, the Planning Inspectorate automated the office doors to improve accessibility for all staff. This modification resulted in a revaluation of the asset in the same month.

Following the termination of the Temple Quay House agreement, the Planning Inspectorate decided to extend the contract at Runway East for an additional 12 months to January 2027. Approval to extend the lease was granted by the Cabinet Office in April 2025 and the contract was signed in May 2025. The right of use asset and liability will be revalued to the net of future rental payments less implied interest in financial year 2025-26.

The PES (Public Expenditure System) requires implied interest on IFR16 Right of Use assets at the extant rate of interest at the point of an event in the life of that asset. The December 2023 rate of 4.72% has been applied to the calculations.

The leases have the following impact on the financial statements:

Quantitative disclosures around right-of-use assets

Buildings 2024/25	Temple Quay House £’000	Runway East £’000	Total £’000
Cost/Valuation
At 1 April 2024	2,003	0	2,003
Additions	-	477	477
Revaluation	-	17	17
Write-off	(2,003)	-	(2,003)
At 31 March 2025	0	494	494
Depreciation
At 1 April 2025	1,543	0	1,543
Depreciation charge in year	-	225	225
Impairment	(1,543)	-	(1,543)
At 31 March 2025	0	225	225
Net Book value at 31 March 2024	459	0	459
Net Book value at 31 March 2025	0	269	269

Quantitative disclosures around lease liabilities

Obligations under leases for the following periods comprise:

	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Buildings
No later than one year	1,361	897
Later than one year and not later than five years	-	693
Later than five years	-	-
Less interest allocated to future periods	(5)	(72)
Present value of obligations	1,356	1,518
Current liability	1,356	841
Non-current liability	-	677

Note that the 2023-24 liability relates solely to Temple Quay House. Of the 2024-25 liability, £1.121m relates to Temple Quay House and £235k related to Runway East.

Quantitative disclosures around elements in the Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure

2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Depreciation on ROU assets	225	668
Interest on ROU liabilities	12	37
Variable lease payments not included in lease liabilities	-	-
Sub-leasing income	-	-
Expense related to short-term leases	89	120
Expense related to low-value asset leases (excluding short-term leases)	-	-
Total	326	825

The depreciation and interest payments relate to Runway East. Short-term leases relate to rental payments for Engine Shed.

Cash payments for rent in relation to Head Office Buildings

2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Temple Quay House	0	448
Engine Shed	89	120
Runway East	254	0
Total cash outflow for leases	343	568

Net Debt Reconciliation for Temple Quay House

Finance lease liabilities	£’000
As at 1 April 2024*	1,963
Cashflow (net of interest)	(243)
Finance leases entered into	477
Lease terminations	(913)
As at 31 March 2025	1,284

*An element of the lease liability totalling £446k was reported within Accruals Expenses as at 31 March 2024

Note 11. Contingent liabilities disclosed under IAS 37

There were three types of contingent liability which existed at 31 March 2025, and have not been provided for in the accounts. These were:

a, Ex gratia: payments which may be made to appellants or other appeal parties as a result of an acknowledged error causing unnecessary expenditure for the claimant. The timing and value of these payments are very difficult to predict but a best estimate of the contingent liability is £393,805 (2023/24: £162,500)

b, Litigation costs: payments which may be incurred following unsuccessful attempts to resist a High Court challenge to an inspector’s decision. The timing and value of such awards are difficult to predict. We have reviewed evidence from previous years on the number of cases which resulted in payment and, applying this trend to the cases in the current year, estimated a contingent liability of £134,000 (2023/24: £177,000).

c, Employment tribunals: there are several employment tribunals outstanding which are not unusual for an organisation of our size. For each case, the Planning Inspectorate has sought legal advice which has directed that there is minimal chance of these cases being upheld. For this reason, there is zero cost estimated for this category of contingent liability.

Note 12. Other financial commitments

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government manages a significant contract for technology services on our behalf and the commitment is reflected in full in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’ Annual Report and Accounts.

The payments to which we are committed, mainly for technology and telephony services, are as follows:

	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Not later than one year	1,426	1,024
Later than one year and not more than five years	387	191

Capital commitments

In addition to the above we are also committed to capital spend on the new casework management system and accompanying citizen facing portal and the new portal for Crown Development.

	2024/25 £’000	2023/24 £’000
Not later than one year	1,324	1,928

Note 13. Provisions

	Ex gratia £’000	Adverse costs £’000	Total £’000
Balance at 1 April 2024	21	80	101
Provided in the year
Utilised in the year	(21)	(34)	(55)
Written back in the year		(15)	(15)
Balance at 31 March 2025	-	31	31
Balance at 1 April 2023	-	-	-
Provided in the year	21	80	101
Utilised in the year	-	-	-
Written back in the year	-	-	-
Balance at 31 March 2024	21	80	101

Ex gratia payments are non-statutory payments, generally made as a result of an acknowledged error causing unnecessary expenditure for the claimant. This can include cases where maladministration is found by the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The provision is the best estimate based on the available information and they are expected to be settled in the short term.

Adverse costs are litigation costs which may be incurred following unsuccessful attempts to resist a High Court challenge to an inspector’s decision. The provision is the best estimate based on the available information.

Note 14. Financial Instruments

As our cash requirements are met through the estimate process, financial instruments play a more limited role in creating and managing risk than would apply to a non-public sector body. The majority of financial instruments relate to contracts to buy non-financial items in line with our expected purchase and usage requirements and we are therefore exposed to little credit, liquidity or market risk.

Note 15. Related-party transactions

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is the controlling related party and the ultimate controlling party.

The Inspectorate has had a significant number of material transactions with other government departments, central government bodies and local government organisations, in relation to the usual course of business. The Departments with which the Inspectorate has the most significant transactions are: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Department for Transport; Highways England; Government Legal Department; and the Government Property Agency.

Non-Executive and Executive Board members must declare any personal or business interest which may, or may be perceived to, influence their judgement as a Board member. During the year no Board member, or other related parties, have undertaken any material transactions with us.

The remuneration of senior managers/Board members is set out in the Remuneration Report.

Note 16. Events after the reporting period

The Planning Inspectorate’s financial statements are laid before the Houses of Parliament by the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Significant post year end events that have required disclosure in the accounts:

	As at 1 April 2024 £000s	Cashflows £000s	Finance Leases Entered into £000s	Lease Terminations £000s	As at 31 March 2025 £000s
Finance Lease Liabilities	1,963	(243)	477	(913)	1,284

Throughout financial year 2024-25, the Planning Inspectorate has been in negotiations with the Government Property Agency regarding our head office at Temple Quay House (see Note 10 for further details). In November 2024 we received notification that our agreement with them would terminate from the end of the third quarter. The annual accounts were prepared based on the outstanding liability we had with them from 1st October 2023 to the 31st December 2024.

In May 2025 the Directors agreed a settlement of £1.1m with the Government Property Agency in respect of disputed balances in relation to the rental of Temple Quay House for:

2023/24            £0.2m

2024/25            £0.9m

The entire £1.1m credit has been included within 2024/25 the Accounts. This partially offsets fruitless payments (Managing Public Money section 4.10) to the Government Property Agency for Temple Quay House of £1.25m (£0.45m impairment of the Right of Use Asset and £0.8m accommodation costs). HMT approval for these write offs was received on 12 June 2025.

In reaching this settlement the Directors have also concluded that certain costs included in the expenditure for the year ended 31 March 2024 totalling £0.5m should have been classified as  fruitless payments under managing public money section 4.10. Upon reaching this conclusion the Directors sought retrospective approval from HMT which was received on 12 June 2025.

Note 17. Prior Period Adjustments for Rights of Use Assets

On the Statement of Financial Position, the Inspectorate has split out the Rights of Use Assets from Property Plant and Equipment for additional clarity.

The right of use asset impairment was reported in the FY23/24 annual report as Other Comprehensive Net Expenditure. The purpose of other expenditure is to capture additional changes in carrying values of assets and liabilities which are not part of the operating costs. The impairment of the asset was captured within the operating costs of the Planning Inspectorate and therefore is now reported within operating expenditure.

	As previously stated £’000s	1) Temple Quay House Impairments	2) Right of Use Asset Reclassifications	As restated £’000s
Statement of Comprehensive net expenditure
Right of Use Asset Impairment	-	1,247		1,247
Net Gain/Loss on Revaluation	1,247	(1,247)		-
Statement of Financial Position
Property Plant and Equipment	1,727		(459)	1,268
Right-of-Use Assets	-		459	459

1) The impairment of the right of use asset was reported in the Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2024 as Other Comprehensive Net Expenditure. The purpose of Other Comprehensive Net Expenditure is to capture changes in values, which are reflected directly in reserves. Having reviewed the impairment the Directors have concluded that the impairment was incorrectly classified in the prior year and should have been recognised as a component of Total Operating Expenditure. Accordingly the presentation of the Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure has been restated as noted above. Other consequential totals have also been restated however these lines have not been produced here.

2) After reviewing the presentation of the Statement of Financial Position the Directors have concluded that it would be more appropriate to separate Right of Use Assets from other elements of Property, Plant and Equipment on the face of the Primary Statement. Accordingly the comparative has been restated as noted above. As both items are included within Non Current Assets there were no consequential changes in the wider Statement of Financial Position.

In addition to the matters outlined above, for clarity, the Directors have renamed the line item Other Liabilities in the Statement of Financial Position to “Lease Liabilities” as, in their judgement, this more properly reflects the underlying nature of the financial statement line item. There were no changes made to the values stated.

ISBN 978-1-5286-5598-9

E03078411