Your correspondence will be received by our Quality Assurance Unit, who will acknowledge it, investigate and reply as soon as possible. We aim to respond within 20 working days. In the unlikely case where you have not received either an acknowledgement or a full reply regarding your letter, please contact the Quality Assurance Unit on 0117 372 8962.
Inspectors have no further direct involvement in the case once their decision is issued. It is the role of the Quality Assurance Unit to investigate complaints or queries about decisions and Inspectors' conduct, or the administrative process that supported the appeal. The Quality Assurance Unit works independently of all of our casework teams. This ensures that all complaints are investigated thoroughly and impartially, and that we reply in clear, straightforward language, avoiding jargon and complicated legal terms.
To assist our investigations we may need to ask the Inspector or other staff for their comments on your correspondence. This helps us to gain as full a picture as possible so that we are better able to decide whether an error has been made.
Once our investigations are complete, we will send a full reply comprehensively responding to all substantive points raised. Any further correspondence in reply to this will be subject to our complaints escalation policy and reviewed at Director level. A final reply will then be issued which will include a referral for further concerns to be addressed (via an MP) to the Parliamentary and Heath Service Ombudsman, who may investigate complaints about the work of Government Departments and Agencies such as the Planning Inspectorate. It is important to highlight that the Ombudsman does not have the power to alter or change an Inspector's decision.
The content on this page is the responsibility of the Planning Inspectorate.
