Application Triage

Planning application triage

Help a member of the public who has an application in front of them but doesn't know which grounds are worth pursuing. This skill reads the application, identifies the material considerations that are genuinely engaged, ranks them, and routes each to the representation skill that handles it — or says plainly that there is no strong objection.

It is the router for the representation skills, not a drafting skill itself. It answers "what should I object about, and how strong is each ground?", then hands off.

When to use

The user has a planning application (a reference + council, or the documents) and asks something like: "should I object to this?", "what are the grounds?", "what's wrong with this application?", "which of these is worth raising?" Use it first, before the topic-specific skills, whenever the grounds aren't already decided.

What you need first

• The application reference and council, or the documents themselves — uploaded, pasted, or already-downloaded files work directly; the companion planning-document-search skill is only needed when you don't have them (it retrieves them from the reference + council).
• The proposal description and application type (full / outline / reserved matters / s73 / listed building consent / householder …) — this frames everything.
• The site's planning constraints — is it in a conservation area, near a listed building, in a flood zone, Green Belt, an AONB/National Landscape, greenfield? Public constraint data (e.g. planning.data.gov.uk for conservation areas, listed buildings, Article 4 directions; the Environment Agency "Flood map for planning" for flood zones) tells you this without the application documents.
• The document list itself — it is the single best signal. The presence of an Ecological Impact Assessment, Transport Assessment, Heritage Statement or Flood Risk Assessment tells you which considerations the applicant themselves thought were engaged.
• The development plan for the area — the adopted local plan (and any made neighbourhood plan), from the council website. Determination starts here (see Step 2), so the relevant policies are needed before grounds can be ranked; the companion policy-compliance-assessment skill identifies and verifies the adopted plan and assesses the proposal against it.
• The site's planning history — previous applications and refusals, appeal decisions on the same site, enforcement history where relevant, extant permissions and their conditions, and any s73 variations. Portals list related applications on the detail page; a previous Inspector's decision on the same site can be worth more than any generic policy argument, and a recent refusal tells you what the LPA already considers unacceptable.
• If this is an amendment application — the parent permission and every earlier amendment. A non-material amendment (s.96A), a variation or removal of conditions (s.73) or a "minor material amendment" is a delta, and its documents describe only what is changing. You need the original permission's decision notice, conditions, approved plans, officer report and any s.106, plus every amendment already made to it, before the change means anything. See references/amendment-applications.md.

The integrity principle

Only flag a ground that is genuinely engaged and arguable. Triage is not a licence to manufacture objections — if the application is sound, or a consideration is not actually in play, say so. Two disciplines in particular:

• Distinguish material from non-material. Objections must rest on material planning considerations. Common non-material concerns to set aside (or reframe): loss of a private view; impact on property values; competition with an existing business; boundary or covenant disputes; the identity or motives of the applicant; construction disturbance in itself (as opposed to a permanent effect); and moral objections. Tell the user honestly when their concern isn't material — and whether it can be reframed as one that is (e.g. "it will ruin my view" is not material, but "it is overbearing and harms the character of the street" may be).
• Rank honestly. Not every engaged ground is a strong ground. Say which are decision- critical, which are supporting, and which are weak — so the user spends effort where it counts.

Workflow

Step 1 — Intake

Get the application (reference + council, or documents), the proposal and its type/stage, the site constraints (conservation area, listed buildings, flood zone, Green Belt, AONB, greenfield/brownfield, protected trees), and the site's planning history (previous applications, refusals, appeal decisions, enforcement, extant permissions and conditions, s73s — see "What you need first"). Retrieve the document list.

If the type is an amendment — stop and rebuild the chain first. For a s.96A non-material amendment, a s.73 variation or removal of conditions, or a "minor material amendment", the application in front of you cannot be triaged on its own documents: it describes the change, not the thing being changed. Work through references/amendment-applications.md — retrieve the parent permission and every earlier amendment, reconstruct what the permission consists of today, and treat that as the baseline the proposal is read against. Two consequences for triage:

• the grounds are about the change and the accumulated changes, not the principle of the development, which the parent permission already settled;
• the route itself may be a ground — a change that is material cannot go through s.96A, and one that alters the operative description cannot go through s.73.

Step 2 — Establish the decision framework (s.38(6))

Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires applications to be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise — so the development plan is the starting point, not an afterthought. Before scanning for grounds, establish:

1. the adopted development plan — the local plan (and any joint/minerals/waste plans) and any made neighbourhood plan;
2. the relevant policies for this proposal and site (settlement boundaries, housing, design, amenity, and the topic policies for each consideration);
3. any emerging plan and the weight it can carry (stage of preparation, unresolved objections, compliance with the Framework's plan-making policies);
4. national policy (NPPF/PPG) as a material consideration alongside the plan.

Grounds framed as conflict with named development-plan policies are the strongest kind an objector can raise — anchor each finding in Step 3 to a plan policy wherever one exists.

Triage needs only enough of this to route. The companion policy-compliance-assessment skill does the work in full — identifying and verifying the adopted plan (adoption dates, superseded and saved policies, the policies map), assessing the proposal policy by policy, and scoring accordance from -2 to +2. Hand off to it for the policy foundation; don't attempt the full assessment here. Remember that the adopted policies are the local authority's own and carry primacy: national policy sits alongside the plan as a material consideration, not above it (though note Annex A(2) of the August 2026 NPPF, which gives "very limited weight" to plan policies materially inconsistent with its national decision-making policies — the national-planning-policy skill carries the rule).

The companion national-planning-policy skill holds the current NPPF/PPG edition register, the verify-before-citing protocol, and the shared decision-making citations (s.38(6) and plan primacy, the presumption in favour of sustainable development — now the location-based scheme at policies S3–S6 of the August 2026 coded NPPF, which replaced the old para 11 "tilted balance" — and emerging-plan weight) — use it for this step, including establishing whether the site is within or outside a settlement (S4 vs S5), which S5 gateway (if any) the applicant could claim, and whether a national refusal-directive policy overrides the presumption for this site.

Step 3 — Scan for engaged considerations

Work through references/material-considerations.md. For each consideration, check the tells — the application type, the proposal, the site constraints, and the presence (or telling absence) of the relevant technical document. Note the evidence for each ground you flag. For each engaged consideration, locate and read the matching consultee response (the consultee map in the reference file says who speaks to what) — read them before ranking, and note where a consultee objects, seeks conditions, or is silent.

Step 4 — Rank

Grade each engaged ground: decision-critical / supporting / weak, on the strength of (a) how clearly the development plan or national policy is engaged, (b) whether the applicant's evidence looks thin or is missing, and (c) how much weight the consideration typically carries. Set aside non-material concerns (with a reframe where possible).

Then apply the "so-what" test: a list of technically valid criticisms is not itself a case for refusal. Note for each ground whether it points to (A) a demonstrated unacceptable impact (a refusal reason), (B) insufficient evidence for the Council to reach the necessary conclusion (a "do not determine yet" ask), or (C) something a condition or obligation could secure (a mitigation ask) — and say honestly whether the grounds, taken together, would plausibly justify refusal under the applicable tests, or whether the credible representation is one that seeks information and conditions. The companion planning-balance skill runs this test in full once the representation skills have evidenced the grounds — recommend it as the final step of the chain.

Step 5 — Route

For each ground worth pursuing, name the representation skill that handles it and hand off:

Recommend an order (lead with the decision-critical grounds). Note where two skills should both run (a scheme often engages several).

Step 6 — Hand off / summarise

Give the user a summary they can scan, not a paragraph. Present:

• the grounds worth objecting on — a ranked list, each ground on its own line with the development-plan policies it engages, its A/B/C class, and the skill that will draft it;
• the non-material concerns to drop, as a short list with the one-line reason each;
• or — if that's the honest answer — a plain statement that there is no strong ground and an objection would not be sustainable.

Any enumeration of three or more items goes in a bulleted or numbered list; never string grounds, policies or asks through a prose paragraph with semicolons.

Reference files

• references/material-considerations.md — the catalogue of material considerations: what each is, the tells that it's engaged, the skill or framework that handles it, and the common non-material concerns to exclude.
• references/amendment-applications.md — amendment applications (s.96A, s.73, ⏳ s.73B): how to spot one, what each route can and cannot carry, how to rebuild the parent-and-amendments chain, what to compare against it, the cumulative-drift patterns, and which grounds are available on an amendment.

Scope and limitations

• Not legal advice; no warranty; output requires human review. Triage is a starting assessment, provided "as is"; a person must confirm the grounds and the evidence before acting.
• England-focused. Material considerations are broadly similar across the UK but the policy framework differs in the devolved nations — flag when the application is outside England.
• A UK planning representation is public and in the submitter's name — carry that warning through to whichever representation skill drafts the objection.
• "No strong ground" is a valid, valuable output. Say it when it's true.