INDEPENDENCE & SAFEGUARDS
Independence
you can check.
Any design review panel can call itself independent. The Design Review Panel publishes the arrangements that demonstrably make it so — and it is independent of the applicant and the design team as well as of the local planning authority. That two-sided independence is what gives its feedback standing.
For applicants, architects, planning teams and local authorities. Projects across England.
The customer has no input into who chairs the session or who sits on the Panel.
Members declare interests in advance, and a prejudicial interest excludes a member.
Panel members are unpaid volunteers. No panellist has a financial stake in the outcome.
The Panel deliberates in private, and the Chair signs off a collective written record.
Each of these is set out in the published Code of Conduct, version 1.0, March 2026.
IN SHORT
The Design Review Panel is independent of the applicant, the design team and the local planning authority alike.
THE QUESTION THAT MATTERS MOST
You pay for the review. What does the fee buy?
It buys the process, not the conclusion. The fee commissions a multidisciplinary Design Review Panel, a structured session and a formal written record. It does not commission agreement.
Panel members take part as unpaid volunteers, with only reasonable out-of-pocket expenses reimbursed. The Chair is paid for their time in preparing the feedback report, as the published Code of Conduct permits.
A fee commissions a review process. It does not purchase an endorsement, and it does not purchase a planning outcome.
No panellist has a financial stake in the outcome, and no part of the fee depends on what the Panel concludes. The Panel stays free to identify strengths, raise concerns, or conclude that the design needs further work before it is ready.
Members from different disciplines considering a completed house on a Panel visit. Published by The Design Review Panel.
HOW INDEPENDENCE IS PROTECTED
Five arrangements, published and checkable.
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05
Selection sits outside the customer’s control
The Design Review Panel is assembled for the proposal’s context and complexity from a multidisciplinary national pool. The customer has no input into who chairs the session or who sits on it.
Interests are declared before the session
Members declare possible interests in advance. A prejudicial interest excludes a member from the review and from the private discussion. Other permitted interests are disclosed to presenters and recorded.
Contact runs through the administrator
Member identities are withheld before the session and introduced at its start, so project contact stays inside the administered review process.
The Panel deliberates in private
During a live review the applicant, the design team and local authority representatives leave while the Panel forms its view.
The record is collective and signed off
The Chair prepares the collective feedback, members have the opportunity to comment, and the Chair signs it off. The issued, locked PDF is the Panel’s formal feedback.
TESTED IN PUBLIC
Independence that an Inspector has already examined.
At Castle Camps in 2022, the council questioned the appellant’s use of this Panel rather than the council’s own design enabling panel. The Inspector examined the point directly. He found there had been sufficient understanding of the site’s characteristics and context for the Panel to be briefed on the local area and its history, and noted that the council’s case offered no direct rebuttal of the Panel’s conclusions.
“I give greater weight to the DRP findings as a result.”
Inspector D Wallis, paragraph 9 · APP/W0530/W/22/3302832 · 21 November 2022
National policy points the same way. The Framework published on 17 August 2026 requires local planning authorities to have access to design review, to encourage its appropriate use, and to take its outcomes into account, at policy DP4(2)(a).
What this does not establish. A case-specific finding on that proposal and that evidence. It does not establish that a council’s own panel is biased, or that every independent review attracts the same weight.
QUESTIONS
Before you commission a review.
THE PUBLISHED RULES
Read them for yourself.
These three documents contain The Design Review Panel’s detailed arrangements for selection, interests, confidentiality and feedback. They are published so applicants and decision-makers can assess the process rather than take it on trust.
Additional terms of reference
Conflicts of interest, confidentiality and publication.
Read the terms
Booking terms
Member identities, the issued report and the scope of the service.
Read the booking terms
EXPLORE FURTHER
Design review at appeal
Three published decisions, and what the Inspector actually said.
Read the decisions →
Exceptional rural homes
Independent review for an individual house in the countryside.
See the approach →
From briefing to written feedback
How a session is planned, run and recorded.
How it works →