The Planning Inspectorate’s customer satisfaction survey work originally involved annual customer satisfaction surveys, each year covering a separate area of the Inspectorate's business such as planning appeals, development plan inquiries and rights of way orders. From 2002 on, the Inspectorate has commissioned a series of customer satisfaction surveys which cover most aspects of the Inspectorate’s business, tracking both satisfaction levels and the progress made by the Inspectorate in acting upon the survey results. The findings of the surveys to date are available via the links shown below.

As well as the main postal surveys carried out in each case, in-depth interviews have been conducted with various organisations with an interest in planning issues, this year involving the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Town and Country Planning Association, the Home Builders Federation, the Advisory Panel on Standards for the Planning Inspectorate, and twenty unrepresented appellants. Three focus groups were also held, with local planning authorities, planning agents, and third parties to appeals (known as `interested parties’). The depth interviews and focus groups helped to inform survey design and provided detailed information on customer views that would have been difficult to elicit in the questionnaire survey.

The 2006 survey questionnaire was similar to that used in the previous survey series to allow for reliable comparison. The survey was a postal survey of 4,000 customers selected from the Inspectorate's customer records. The sample was stratified by case type (planning appeals, enforcement appeals, adverts, call-ins etc) and respondent type (local authority, agents, individual appellants and interested parties), with selection being at random within strata. The Inspectorate Customer Panel were also invited to complete an online questionnaire, as well as commenting on a range of material throughout the year.

In total, 1,498 questionnaires were returned giving a response rate of 37%. The main findings are set out in the report below under a series of headings, with any differences between the surveys highlighted in the text.

Download the Customer Satisfaction Survey in PDF Format 460kb