If you want to complain about an aspect of an appeal that you have been involved in, either directly or indirectly in England, and the decision on the appeal has been issued, please contact the address below:

Complaints about appeal decisions in England

The Planning Inspectorate
Quality Assurance Unit
4/11 Eagle Wing
Temple Quay House
2 The Square
Temple Quay
Bristol
BS1 6PN

Telephone: 0117 372 8252
Fax: 0117 372 8139
Email: complaints@planning-inspectorate.gsi.gov.uk

Complaints leaflet downloads

Our Complaints Procedures PDF 50kb,

Our Complaints Procedures Word 350kb

Challenging the decision in the High Court

View the leaflet 'Challenging the decision in the High Court' in PDF 38kb,
View the leaflet 'Challenging the decision in the High Court' in Word 344kb

The Judge over your shoulder

View 'the Judge over your shoulder' leaflet produced by Treasury Solicitors in PDF 346KB

Complaining to the Ombudsman

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman deals with complaints from members of the public that they have suffered injustice because of maladministration by government departments, agencies or certain other public bodies.

The Ombudsman is not a civil servant but is an officer of the House of Commons, appointed by the Queen. Their services are independent, confidential and free of charge.

Further information:

Helpline: 0845 0154033
E-mail: phso-enquiries@ombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.ombudsman.org.uk

Dealing with Complaints

Introduction
Complaints about the Procedure
Complaints about the Inspector or the Decision
Complaints about Development Plans or Other aspects of the Inspectorate's Work
Wales
Telephone Complaints
E-Mail Complaints

Introduction

We treat complaints as a valuable source of information on how we handle appeals and the quality of Inspectors' work. Complaints, whatever their source, will be dealt with thoroughly, politely and promptly.

Please note, we can only deal with complaints about our own work. If you are concerned about planning decisions made by your local council or about the planning system in general then you should write either to the council itself or to the relevant government department. Further help and information is available on our F A Q page.

Complaints about the Procedure

If your complaint is about the procedural handling of the case, we will pass it on to the relevant case officer. If you are one of the main parties to the appeal, the case officer will have been notified to you at the start. The case officer is the person responsible for overseeing the procedural aspects of the case. Either the case officer or a senior manager from our procedure side will reply to you within 3 weeks of receiving your letter. If they cannot do so within that time they will write to you to let you know.

If you are not happy with the response you have received from our procedure team then you can complain to our Complaints Officer in our Quality Assurance Unit.

Complaints about the Inspector or the Decision

If your complaint is about the way the Inspector handled the site visit, hearing or inquiry, or you think the decision itself contains errors or is flawed in some way, then it will be dealt with by the Quality Assurance Unit. You should remember that we have no power to reconsider an Inspector's decision.

If an error is brought to our attention we take it very seriously. To this end we have an extremely stringent quality target that 99% of our issued decisions will be free from error. This target is monitored by an external body called the Advisory Panel on Standards (APOS) who report regularly to the The Department for Communities and Local Government, and to the National Assembly for Wales, on the target itself, on the methods we use to ensure we meet the target and on our dealing with correspondence in general. APOS are particularly keen to ensure that our handling and analysis of complaints is rigorous and fair.

If, having investigated the complaint, we agree that any part of it is substantiated, we will write to apologise. We will also take steps to try to ensure that such a mistake does not happen again.
A decision letter is a legal document and can only be reconsidered if it is first successfully challenged in the High Court. Such a challenge must be made within 6 weeks of the date of a planning decision or a ground (a) decision in an enforcement case, or 4 weeks in the case of grounds (b) - (g).

We will endeavour to reply within 3 weeks and will give priority to complaints where the period for challenging the decision in the High Court is still open. If we cannot do so we will write to say so. If we do not think a complaint can be substantiated we will write to explain why.

Complaints about other aspects of our work

We also deal with a large number of other types of case work that are small in number but often quite technically complicated. Complaints about these will be passed to the specialist sections who are responsible for them. They too will respond within the same timescales as the QAU.

In all cases, if you are not satisfied with the response you have received from these sections you should write to the Complaints officer in the Quality Assurance Unit at the above address, who will investigate the matter for you independently from the branch concerned.

Wales

Complaints about any type of Welsh case should be directed to our Welsh office, who investigate all Welsh complaints themselves. Please visit the welsh site for more information.

Telephone Complaints

Complaints by telephone will be dealt with immediately whenever possible. Where a problem requires further investigation, we will try to obtain the necessary information and then send a written reply. If a complaint raises complex matters we may ask for it to be put into writing so as to avoid any misunderstanding.

In the case of a telephone complaint where we need to send a written reply, we will treat the complaint as if it was a written one and endeavor to reply within the timescales set out above.

E-Mail Complaints

If you send us an e-mail, we will deal with it in the same timescales as for written correspondence. However, unless you have asked for enclosures that we do not have electronically we will reply via an e-mail
complaints@planning-inspectorate.gsi.gov.uk

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