Costs Awards in Planning Appeals
Q14 How might a third party be awarded their costs?
Third parties may be awarded costs, in their favour, when an inquiry (or hearing) is cancelled. An award may be made in the following circumstances:
- where unreasonable conduct by the appellant
or the local planning authority causes
the cancellation of an inquiry (or
hearing); or
- where an appellant withdraws the appeal too late for the inquiry (or hearing) to be cancelled, or fails to attend an inquiry (or hearing).
When this happens, third parties are unlikely to have grounds for claiming costs for wasted preparation work (in addition to their attendance costs) unless they can show that, before incurring any expense , they forewarned the appellant and the local planning authority that they intended to appear at the inquiry (or hearing); and they kept in close touch with the local planning authority, and first enquired whether the appellant was trying to resolve differences over the appeal issues by discussion with them.
