About

The planning system is open to anyone. Anybody can comment on an application, and a council has to consider every material point raised. In principle that makes it fair.

In practice it isn't, because the system rewards people who know how it works. An applicant arrives with a planning consultant, a design and access statement and a heritage appraisal. A neighbour arrives with a letter saying they don't like it. Both go in the file. Only one engages the policies the officer is obliged to apply, and only one has to be answered in the report.

Closing that gap used to mean hiring a consultant for several hundred pounds. Most of what a consultant does on a small objection is research: finding the adopted local plan, working out which designations cover the site, reading what the applicant submitted, and matching all of that to the right policies. That research is now largely automatable, because the planning data is public.

So that is what this does. You give us a planning reference. We find the application, check the site against the Government's national planning data, read your council's adopted plan and the applicant's own documents, and write an objection that cites the policies by number, with every reference checked against the source.

We are careful about two things in particular. We only argue material planning considerations, because raising the wrong ones actively weakens a letter. And we never invent a policy reference: if we can't verify something, we tell you rather than let you send it.

The letter goes in your name, and you can change any of it before you send it. You know the site; we know the policy.