The Householder Appeals Service (HAS) started on 6 April 2009. This is the date that the relevant secondary legislation came into force, bringing legal weight to a new, expedited procedure for householder appeals which proceed on the basis of written representations

The process

The revised process includes major changes for the Inspectorate, for local planning authorities and for appellants. The new service builds on work started by the Fast Track Householder Pilot process that has been running since January 2008.

At the heart of the new HAS process is the ability to use the original application file held by the local planning authority in an electronic format for administering the appeal. The local planning authority will rely purely on their decision notice, together with any internal reports to defend the appeal. The LPA will not provide a formal appeal statement and will not attend the site visit.

The appellant will send in their full statement of case with their appeal forms.

The Inspector will visit the site alone, with the appellant present in some cases only to provide access to the site.

The streamlined process will decide householder appeals in eight weeks. This is approximately 6 weeks quicker than at present. The pilot, which does not have the benefit of changes to the secondary legislation, has been targeting 12 weeks.

The benefits

There are benefits for all stakeholders:

For appellants, the process is simpler to understand, requires less form filling and relies mainly on documentation already sent to the local planning authority. There are therefore reductions in the time taken to submit the appeal and ultimately in receiving the decision.
For the Inspectorate there is less time taken in chasing up missing documents, putting the appeal file together, and generally administering the process.
For local planning authorities, time and cost savings are achieved by not having to provide a formal appeal statement, by using electronic files, filling in simpler forms and by removing the need to send their limited planning resources to attend the appeal site visit.

The Pilot

The Planning Inspectorate’s pilot scheme for the Householder Appeals Service (HAS) went live on 2 January 2008. The objective was to test the HAS procedure on a live, but voluntary basis, in readiness for the full roll-out of the service.

Who has been taking part in the Pilot?

The whole pilot process has been completely voluntary for both local planning authorities and for appellants.

Appellants whose appeals fall within the scope of the pilot have received information on both the current procedure and also the pilot procedure. They have then had the option to choose which process to follow. Participation is the Pilot has been entirely voluntary.

A list of the local planning authorities who are taking part in the pilot can be found on the Planning Portal.

In excess of 100 LPAs signed up to the Pilot in advance of the full Householder Appeals Service process allowing easier LPA transition to the full service for those LPAs involved.