Fixed-price research · Coverage confirmed before payment
Planning Appeal Evidence Packs
Comparable planning decisions from your council — approved and refused — for appeals, objections, pre-apps and planning statements. From £195.
A PlanningLens evidence pack is a fixed-price set of comparable applications of the same type from a single council, with decision dates, a link to each council portal record and officer report, and a short summary evidence table — delivered as a PDF plus a spreadsheet with source links, drawn from 3.4M+ real decisions across 295 UK councils. Nothing is charged until coverage is confirmed for your job.
Fixed price from £195, published openly•Coverage confirmed within 24 hours, before payment•Every record links to the council’s own register
£195
Fixed price, from
24h
Coverage confirmation
Both
Approved & refused
PDF + XLSX
Deliverable
This research is usually done by hand. Trawling a council portal for comparable decisions is hours of billable time — per case. PlanningLens generates the comparables from its own decision index in minutes, then a human checks every record before it ships. Same evidence, a fraction of the cost.
What’s in a pack
One council, one application type, one job. Every pack contains:
Comparable applications from the same council — matched to your application type, so an inspector or case officer is looking at like-for-like decisions, not a national grab-bag.
Approved and refused examples, both — what the council permits and what it turns down. One-sided evidence is weak evidence; the pack shows the pattern honestly.
Decision dates for every comparable, so recency and any shift in the council’s behaviour over time is visible at a glance.
A working link to each council portal record — and to the officer report where the council publishes one — so every comparable can be verified and quoted at source.
A short summary evidence table ready to reference in an appeal statement, objection letter, pre-app enquiry or planning statement.
Delivered as PDF + spreadsheet + source links — the PDF to read and share, the spreadsheet to sort, filter and lift into your own documents.
Who uses evidence packs
The data is neutral — it shows what the council actually decided, whichever side of an application you’re on.
Planning consultants and agents — comparables for pre-applications, planning statements and appeal statements, without burning billable hours on portal research. The routine workflow, not just the emergency.
Appellants working to a deadline — a refused application and a ticking appeal clock is exactly when hand-searching a portal is least practical. Urgent turnaround is available.
Objectors and community groups — how the council has decided comparable schemes is evidence for objections too. Same pack, same sources, same price.
How it works
1
Send your reference or proposal
Email a planning application reference, or a short description of the proposal and the council it sits in. That’s all that’s needed to scope the job.
2
Coverage confirmed within 24 hours
We check our index for your council and application type and confirm — honestly — whether useful comparables exist. If they don’t, we say so and nothing is charged.
3
Pack delivered
Comparables compiled from the decision index, human-checked record by record, and delivered as PDF + spreadsheet with a source link for every entry.
Pricing
Published openly, like everything else on this site. £195 is the minimum engagement.
£195
Standard pack
One council, one application type. Comparable decisions — approved and refused — with dates, portal and officer-report links, and a summary evidence table. PDF + spreadsheet.
£295
Urgent or complex
Deadline-driven jobs prioritised ahead of the queue, and jobs where the comparable set is genuinely harder to assemble. Scope and turnaround agreed when coverage is confirmed.
Larger or recurring research jobs are quoted individually — see related services below. No payment is taken until coverage is confirmed for your council and application type.
Start with a coverage check, not an invoice
Send your planning reference or proposal. We’ll confirm within 24 hours whether we can produce useful comparables for your council and application type — before any payment.
An evidence pack is statistical research support: it shows what your council actually decided on comparable applications, with every record linked to the council’s own register so it can be verified and cited at source. It is not planning advice. A pack does not assess the merits of your case, interpret policy, or recommend a strategy — that is the job of a planning professional. Not suitable as a substitute for professional planning advice in legal submissions. If you’re working with a consultant, the pack is prepared to slot into their workflow; if you’re self-representing, it gives you the same comparable-decisions research a consultant would commission — the judgement about how to use it remains yours or your adviser’s.
Coverage, honestly stated
PlanningLens currently indexes 295 councils and 3,400,000+ planning decisions across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, collected from public council portals. Depth varies by council — some registers reach back many years, others publish only recent history — and the usefulness of a comparables set depends on how much decided history exists for your council and application type. That is exactly why every job starts with a free coverage check: we confirm within 24 hours whether useful comparables exist, and if the honest answer is no, we say no. The per-council picture is on the All Councils index.
Related research services
Bespoke planning data extracts, from £195 — custom cuts of the decision index: HMO decisions across a region, refusal patterns for a council cluster, decision times by category. Scoped and quoted per job.
Commissioned planning-data research, from £1,000 — a full data briefing on your question, with your name on it, in the style of our published research. One firm rule: no guaranteed conclusions, no cherry-picked data — methodology is disclosed and findings follow the data wherever they land. That independence is what makes the research worth commissioning.
Questions people ask
Can I get comparable planning decisions for a planning appeal?
Yes — a PlanningLens evidence pack compiles comparable decisions from your council: approved and refused examples of the same application type, with decision dates, links to each council portal record and officer report, and a summary evidence table, delivered as PDF + spreadsheet. Send your planning reference or proposal and coverage is confirmed within 24 hours, before any payment.
How much does an evidence pack cost?
£195 for a standard pack; from £295 for urgent or complex jobs. £195 is the minimum engagement, and nothing is charged until coverage is confirmed for your council and application type.
Do packs only cover appeals?
No. Appeals are the deadline-driven case, but the same comparables research supports objections, pre-application enquiries and planning statements — the routine consultant workflow, not just the emergency.
Where do the comparables come from?
From the council’s own published planning register, collected and normalised by PlanningLens’s own infrastructure. Every comparable in a pack carries a link to the original council record, so anything can be verified and quoted at source.
Is this planning advice?
No. A pack is statistical research support — it shows what the council actually decided on comparable applications. It does not assess your case’s merits or recommend a strategy, and it is not suitable as a substitute for professional planning advice in legal submissions.