Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what proportion of planning authority judicial review challenges to appeal decisions incur the award of costs against them.

Guidance on the award of costs in planning appeals is published here.

The Planning Inspectorate uses that guidance to support its decisions on costs awards, which can apply to any main party in the appeal if they behave unreasonably.

Parties in planning appeals and other planning proceedings normally meet their own expenses, but the costs regime exists in legislation to discourage unreasonable behaviour during the appeals process.

The Planning Inspectorate approaches all its decisions and recommendations openly, fairly and impartially, as expected of Tribunals.

In judicial review proceedings and court challenges it is common practice for the winning party to seek to recover their costs from the losing party - whether they are successful in doing so is a matter for the Judge. The Inspectorate does not systematically collect store data on the number of times costs are incurred.