Collaboration Aims to Enhance Quality for All

Earlier this year we sought views as part of our 2025 stakeholder survey, including performance against our values and the quality of our decision-making.

We were delighted to double the number of responses from the previous year with 258 stakeholders offering their thoughts from the worlds of LPAs, planning agents, developers, members of the public and professional bodies.

Here's what they told us: (see 'Further data' in notes)

• Most respondents believe we are true to our values of impartiality, fairness and openness.
• 75% (74% in 2024) told us they felt our decisions, recommendations and advice were of a high quality (whether they agreed with the outcome or not).
• Customer focus remains an area for development, though it has improved. This year 36% agreed or strongly agreed we are customer-focused (31% in 2024).

While the numbers tell us part of the story, many of those who responded helpfully provided more detail behind their answers allowing us to identify themes where some stakeholders have concerns. They include timeliness of decisions, transparency and customer-focus.

Over the last year we have worked to make improvements in these areas and more including:

Timeliness

We know from your feedback how important the timeliness of decisions is for you. It is for us too, and we're making big steps in the right direction.

• Decision times are becoming faster and more predictable. Our most recent published statistics show our average decision time for cases decided in September was 20 weeks, quicker than the 25-week average of the previous 12 months. Stubborn legacy cases remain, particularly in areas such as written enforcement appeals, so we're making these our focus.

• The Government's Plan for Change has pledged to deliver 150 infrastructure decisions in its first term. We're helping to make it happen by making time savings at each stage of the Nationally Significant Infrastructure process and continuing to hit statutory deadlines.

• Our Business Plan demonstrates how we're focusing on rapidly recruiting more Inspectors and support staff to ensure we're making more decisions more quickly without compromising on quality.

• Simplified planning appeal procedures should be introduced to the majority of planning appeals decided via written representations by the end of the year. Streamlining processes will ensure planning appeal decisions can be made more quickly, benefiting developers, local authorities and communities alike.

• We've introduced a checklist for local plan examinations which is designed to ensure plans are ready for examination, resulting in a more efficient process for both local planning authorities and the Inspectorate whilst maintaining examination quality

Transparency and quality

• We value our privileged position at the heart of the planning system and know how important it is for our leaders and experts to be available to advise and lead discussions on planning reforms. We continue to provide Inspectors for conferences and training events with partners.

• Our expert-led webinar series has provided up to date guidance to more than 4,000 live attendees and more than 6,000 on YouTube covering topics such as presenting evidence, public rights of way casework and best practice in NSIP applications.

• We've introduced Plain English training for Inspectors on Local Plans to improve understanding of reports and decisions.

• Quality assurance is a key workstream of our latest Business Plan and we are focusing on improving processes and increasing our work to assure continued quality of our casework.

Customer focus

• We continue to invest in digital improvements aimed at making the planning process easier for stakeholders. For example, we have announced the national rollout of our digital appeals service by the end of the year following a successful pilot, which significantly streamlines the submission and management of appeals.

• We've launched the Find a Crown Development website to provide in one place all the documents and representations on applications for non-urgent nationally important developments made by Crown bodies.

• We've changed how we organise our work to a service-model making it easier for us to focus on customers and allocate resources and budget to the services that matter most to stakeholders.

• We have reviewed and updated numerous areas of our customer-facing guidance across our Common Land service on Gov.uk, making the application process clearer and easier for applicants to engage with.

We want to thank everyone who took the time to take part in the annual survey and assure you that each response has been valuable for us as we collectively work to improve the planning system for all. 

If you would like to sign up for regular updates from the Inspectorate, including having your say in the next survey and hearing more about our webinar series, please visit Planning Inspectorate webinars - GOV.UK and follow us on LinkedIn . 

Notes

Further data

Question: How far do you agree with the following statements? The Planning Inspectorate is…

How much do you agree with this statement? Planning Inspectorate decisions, recommendations and advice, whether in your favour or not, are of a high quality

You can find all the Planning Inspectorate's research and statistics including our latest performance and decision times at Research and statistics - GOV.UK . See also a selection of our casework decisions over a 5-year rolling period in our casework database.