Search Tips

  1. Always put double inverted commas around your search term, for example, "80 dwellings" finds appeals referring to precisely 80 dwellings whereas searching for 80 dwellings (without inverted commas) finds appeals mentioning 80 and dwellings, for example referring to NPPF paragraph 80 in an appeal of 2 dwellings.
  2. For maximum effectiveness, combine keywords with outcome (eg. Allowed), authority, date, etc.
  3. If your search does not find the appeal you were looking for, consider variations the Inspector may have used, for example "brownfield land" instead of "previously developed land".
  4. The search will return documents containing ALL the keywords you put in. For example if you type yummie dwelling (without inverted commas) you will get appeals containing both words, namely an appeal by Yummie Coffee that involves noise impacts on an adjoining dwelling.
  5. Ensure correct spelling. For example, "rear conservitory" will  not return any results due to the spelling error.
  6. The search allows interchange of singular/plural words. For example, "wind farm" will find "wind farms" and "sustainable development" will find "sustainable developments".
  7. Longer phrases can help narrow the search, for example "conflicts with the development plan when read as a whole" will find appeals with that exact phrase.
  8. Use the minus sign (-) to remove documents containing a particular word. e.g.  windfarm -offshore will find windfarms, but exclude documents containing the word "offshore".  (Although an onshore windfarm development may legitmately mention an offshore windfarm nearby and thus be excluded from the results, so be aware of this possibility.)
  9. Where a Decision is written by 2 individuals, namely an appeal planning officer assisting a more senior Inspector, they are indexed under the Inspector as the formal decision maker. To find appeals by a named appeal planning officer, put their name into the Keyword search rather than into the Inspector search.
  10. Results are often presented with dots between the words, eg. "sustainable... ...development". Don't be put off by this as you will find the appeal documents contain the phrase "sustainable development" without any gaps.
  11. A maximum of 150 documents will be returned.  There is no paging of results. The filters will help you narrow down searches, and you can add more relevant words to the search.
  12. Advice on searches using the Appeals Map can be found on our blog here.
  13. See the FAQs tab for miscelleous queries such as finding Welsh appeals, former LPAs, etc.