Policy Representation

Policy representation — support or objection

Turn a policy analysis into the letter that actually gets sent. This skill takes the scored policy table from policy-compliance-assessment and drafts a representation that a case officer can lift into the officer report — in support or in objection, according to the user's choice.

It is the only skill in this repo that drafts support as well as objection, and the discipline is the same either way: every point anchored to a quoted policy and to the application's own documents, the other side acknowledged, and an ask the analysis can carry.

When to use

The user has a policy analysis (or the material for one) and asks: "write my representation", "draft a letter of support for this application", "draft an objection based on the local plan policies", "put this into a letter I can send to the council".

Run after policy-compliance-assessment. If no policy analysis exists yet, run that skill first — this one does not assess policy, and a representation asserting policy conclusions that have not been worked through is precisely the thing councils discount.

Not this skill: the four topic representation skills (ecological-, transport-, heritage-, flood-representation) draft objections on their own technical grounds and own the deficiency analysis for those topics. Where they have run, integrate their points here rather than restating them — or let them stand as their own representation and use this skill for the policy case.

What you need first

• The policy analysis — the plan register, the scored policy table (with quoted requirements, the evidence, the weight tiers and the A/B/C classification), and the accordance statement. This is the skill's raw material.
• The user's chosen stance — support or objection (see the next section before accepting it).
• The application details — reference, site address, proposal description, council, and the case officer's name if known.
• The application documents for the facts each point relies on, quoted.
• If this is an amendment application — the parent permission and every earlier amendment. A s.96A non-material amendment or a s.73 variation supplies only the change, so a representation drafted from its documents alone argues about a covering letter. You need the parent's decision notice, conditions, approved plans, officer report and s.106, plus every earlier amendment, and the policy analysis must have been done against that baseline. Method: the application-triage skill's references/amendment-applications.md.
• The consultation deadline and the submission route — normally the comment form on the council's planning portal, or an email quoting the application reference. Note that material considerations can be raised at any time before the application is determined, so a missed consultation deadline is not necessarily the end.
• Anything from planning-balance, if it has run — its four outcomes map directly onto the ask this skill states.
• What the user is willing to make public (see the publication warning below).

Stance and integrity (read before drafting)

The stance is the user's to choose. The evidence is not.

A representation is the user's own; they are entitled to support or oppose an application for their own reasons, and this skill drafts what they ask for. What it will not do is invent the policy case for it.

• Only make points the analysis supports. Every point must trace to a policy in the table, with its quoted requirement and its evidence. No point may overstate a score — a -1 tension is not written as a breach, and a +1 compliance is not written as a positive benefit.
• Never manufacture compliance or conflict, misquote a policy, quote a requirement out of its exception limbs, or present an unassessable point (?) as a demonstrated one.
• Where the requested stance runs against the analysis, say so plainly, then offer the honest routes. Set out which points do and do not support the stance, and offer:
  1. draft on the supportable points only, with the mismatch stated to the user (and, where integrity requires, acknowledged in the letter itself);
  2. a stance that fits the evidence better — support subject to conditions, no objection but requesting conditions, or objection limited to named policies;
  3. the opposite stance. Then follow the user's decision, and draft it properly.
• Do not hide the other side. An objection that ignores the policies the scheme complies with, or a letter of support that ignores a -2 conflict, invites the reply that the writer has not read the plan. Acknowledging and answering the contrary point is what makes a representation credible.
• Declare an interest. If the user is the applicant, their agent, a relative, an employee, a competitor, a prospective purchaser, or is writing as part of an organised campaign, the representation should say so. Undisclosed interests and identical template letters are discounted when spotted — and rightly.
• Write in the user's own words. The templates are skeletons, not text to submit verbatim. A representation in the writer's own voice, on this application's facts, carries weight that a circulated form letter does not.
• A representation is public. In the UK it is normally published on the council's portal in the submitter's name and kept on the record. Names are usually published; addresses, emails and signatures are usually redacted, but practice varies — so include only personal detail the user is content to see published, and say this before they send.

Workflow

Step 1 — Intake and confirm the stance

Take the policy analysis and the stance. Before drafting, run the mismatch check: does the weight of the analysis point the same way as the requested stance? If not, apply the integrity routes above and settle the stance with the user before writing.

Step 2 — Select the points to lead on

A representation is not the policy table restated. Choose three to six points, ordered by force:

• lead with the highest-magnitude scores (-2 / +2) on policies flagged most important;
• include a ? point where the gap is material — it carries the "do not determine yet" ask;
• drop 0s, and drop -1s on peripheral policies. Filler dilutes; a short letter making three policy points well beats a long one making eleven.
• prefer development plan policies to national or emerging ones. Where the plan carries the point, national policy is support, not the lead — and an emerging policy leads only where nothing adopted covers the matter, with its limited weight stated.

On an amendment, every point is about the change. Lead on what this variation, and the accumulated variations, do to the permitted scheme — never on the principle the parent permission settled. A representation that reads as opposition to the development already permitted is set aside whatever its policy content, and the route itself ("this change is material and cannot be made under s.96A") is often the strongest point available.

Step 3 — Build each point

One point per numbered section, each with the same anatomy (see references/house-style.md):

1. The conclusion as the heading — "The proposal conflicts with Policy [ref]…" or "The proposal accords with Policy [ref]…".
2. The policy requirement, quoted, with the plan name and adoption date.
3. The fact, from the application's own documents — quoted, with the document, author, date and paragraph or drawing reference.
4. The conclusion, reasoned — why the fact does or does not satisfy the requirement.
5. The ask, if the point carries one.

Step 4 — Answer the other side

• In objection: acknowledge the policies the scheme complies with and the benefits it claims, then explain why the conflicts nevertheless outweigh them. Where a benefit is unsecured or unquantified, say so — with the applicant's own document quoted.
• In support: acknowledge the principal objections and the conflicts the analysis found, then explain why they are outweighed, are matters of detail, or can be secured by condition. Support that engages with the objections is far more useful to a case officer than support that does not.

Frame both against the statutory starting point — determination in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise — and take the current citations, including how the presumption in national policy (NPPF S3–S6 — location-based since August 2026) bears on the site, from the national-planning-policy skill. Do not cite an NPPF reference that has not been verified at run time — the August 2026 edition uses coded policies, and a paragraph-number citation is itself a stale-edition tell.

Step 5 — State the ask

The ask must be one the analysis can carry, and consistent with planning-balance where it has run:

Conditions and obligations asked for must themselves be capable of meeting the statutory tests — take those from the national-planning-policy skill. Over-asking (refusal where a condition would plainly do) weakens the whole representation.

Step 6 — Draft

Draft to references/house-style.md and the matching skeleton in references/representation-templates.md: header → RE line → opening (consultation status, stance, request to be placed on the file) → the policy framework as a short bulleted list → numbered points → the other side answered → numbered summary of requests → the stance sentence → sign-off.

Step 7 — Check before sending

• Every policy quoted is from the adopted document, with its name, adoption date and reference — and matches the analysis.
• Every fact is quoted from an application document, correctly referenced.
• No point overstates its score; no ? is written as demonstrated; no -1 is written as a breach.
• The other side is acknowledged and answered.
• The stance, the points and the ask are consistent with each other.
• Any interest is declared; the text is in the user's own words, not a form letter.
• The ask is concrete, correctly timed ("before determination"), and passes the conditions and obligations tests where it asks for them.
• Any NPPF/PPG citation has been verified at run time against the current edition.
• The submission route and deadline are given to the user.
• Hand back to a human, with the two warnings: the draft must be read and checked, and submitting it puts a public document in the user's name on the council's portal.

Reference files

• references/house-style.md — how a strong policy-led representation reads, in either stance: voice, structure, the anatomy of a policy point, and the moves specific to support and to objection.
• references/representation-templates.md — two skeletons (objection and support) with condensed, annotated worked examples.

Scope and limitations

• Not legal advice, and no warranty. A drafting aid for a lay representation; not a substitute for a solicitor or a planning consultant; guarantees no outcome; provided "as is".
• Human review is necessary before submitting. A person must check every quotation, policy reference and figure against the actual documents.
• A UK planning representation is a public document in the submitter's name — normally published on the council's portal and kept on the record. Include only personal details the user is content to make public.
• England-focused. The policy framework cited is England's; flag and adjust elsewhere.
• Evidence-bound and stance-honest. The user chooses the stance; the skill does not bend the evidence to it, and says so when the two do not match.
• "The policies don't support the letter you want" is a valid, valuable output — as is advising a narrower stance than the one requested.