Awarded partial costs on appeal - what next?

[lovemakespeace]

Hello - just wondering if anyone can help.

We have finally got planning permission for an ancillary annexe in our garden. Hurray! It has been a long drawn out painful process.

We won on appeal and have been awarded partial costs (the application was refused by the council on two grounds, one one was found to be unreasonable for several reasons).

Now we have to contact the council about what costs to claim. We would like to claim all the agents fees as we would not have probably used her if the application was only refused on the "reasonable" ground. It was the unreasonable crazy one that we felt we needed help with.

Has anyone done this before and can shed any light on the process?

Many thanks

My neighbour was awarded full costs as pretty much every ground against policy (which covered her appeal costs and her planning agent costs) but I'm not sure what happens for partial costs.

But my approach would be the same as yours. If you can demonstrate (in terms of timing) that you only appointed the planning agent after you you had the unreasonable ruling (i.e. you weren't using her for the original application), then you should be able to get all her fees back - the aim is to put you in the same financial position as you would have been in if the council hadn't behaved unreasonably. Explain to them that you would have appealed without her help if it had just been the one 'reasonable' ground. Even better if you have email correspondence when you appointed her backing this up. Obvs you won't be able to claim the appeal costs that would have been incurred anyway (based on the 'reasonable' ground).

Your planning agent should be able to advise you too.

Thanks origami. You have just jogged my mind re the sequence if events, I think that will help us

Yes we will speak to our agent too although we did the costs bit ourselves and she works to pretty tight margins so good to figure out ourselves too