Case management
The nine weeks nobody warns you about.
Most of the pain in a planning application is not the drafting. It is the eleven weeks afterwards, when nobody replies, nothing is published, and you have no idea whether silence means it is fine or it is dead.
- Case management, on a householder case
- £200Case management, on a householder case
- Statutory target for a householder decision
- 8 weeksStatutory target for a householder decision
- Thread every officer message lands in
- 1Thread every officer message lands in
- Times you have to chase the council yourself
- 0Times you have to chase the council yourself
What we do
We hold the file so you do not have to.
We submit it through the Planning Portal and pay your council’s fee at cost. We watch for validation, and when the council asks for something we answer it. We chase when it slips past the target date, because it very often does.
You see all of it as it happens rather than being told about it afterwards. Nothing about your own application is hidden from you.
What lands in the file
Everything, in the order it happened.
- Submission
- Lodged and paid
- Through the Planning Portal, with the reference the council will use for the rest of its life.
- Validation
- Accepted or queried
- If they query the pack we answer it. This is where an application most often stalls for weeks unnoticed.
- Consultation
- Who objected and why
- Neighbour and statutory responses as they are published, with what each one actually says.
- Officer contact
- One thread
- Every message to and from the case officer, in writing, in one place, timestamped.
- The slip
- Chased, not waited on
- When the target date passes we chase it. You do not have to work out whether silence is normal.
- Decision
- The notice itself
- In your file the day it lands, with the conditions explained in plain words.
Timescales
What the council is actually working to.
These are statutory targets, not guarantees, and a great many authorities miss them. Knowing the target is what turns silence from frightening into merely annoying.
| Application | Statutory target |
|---|---|
| Householder | 8 weeks |
| Minor | 8 weeks |
| Major | 13 weeks |
| Environmental impact assessment | 16 weeks |
| Prior approval | 56 days |
| Discharge of conditions | 8 weeks |
Hand the folder over.
Draw your site, see the route and the price, and let someone else hold the file from submission to decision notice.