Making your Enforcement Appeal
6. The written procedure
6.1 Appeals which are decided by the written procedure are governed by The Town and Country Planning (Enforcement)(Writtten Representations Procedure)( England ) Regulations 2002 . The timetable for the written procedure is designed to make the appeal proceed quickly and fairly. The diagram at Appendix 1 shows the timetable. Everyone involved in the appeal should keep to the timetable or their representations may not be taken into account.
6.2 The grounds of appeal and supporting facts, set out on the appeal form, make up your case. If you don’t give them to us or we think your grounds and facts are inadequate, we will ask you for more details. If we don’t receive them in time we won’t deal with your appeal on any of the grounds which are not supported by facts.
6.3 The regulations say that the LPA must fill in a questionnaire and send it to you and us with documents to support their decision. These documents include the relevant plans or policies on which the decision to issue an enforcement notice was based.
6.4 If you or the LPA want to say any more, we must receive two copies within six weeks of the ‘starting date’. We will send a copy of your comments to the LPA and send you a copy of anything they send us. We will also send you any comments from interested people. If possible you should follow the guidelines on how to set out your statement in Appendix 5.
6.5 Within nine weeks of the starting date, you and the LPA can send us any comments on each other’s statement and those made by any interested people. If we receive these outside the time limit, we will not normally consider them.
6.6 Don’t comment just for the sake of it. Only send us further comments if you have something new to say.
Using e-mail or post
6.7 If you send us your documents by e-mail, you only need to send us one copy of each. However, if you post your documents, please send us 2 copies of everything and put the full appeal reference number on each copy.
Late comments
6.8 We expect everyone involved to keep to the timetable. If we receive representations from you, the LPA or interested people after the time limit ends, the Inspector will not normally take them into account when deciding your appeal. If the Inspector asks for more information from you or the LPA, we will send a copy of that information to you or the LPA. We will allow time for comment.
The site visit
6.9 We will send the appeal papers to the Inspector. He or she will study the enforcement notice, appeal papers and comments, and will normally visit the site.
6.10 If you said on your appeal form that the Inspector can view the site from public land, and the LPA agree, we will arrange an unaccompanied site visit where the Inspector will not meet anyone. Anything you want to say about your appeal must be in writing.
