The problem
Certain expert bodies must be consulted on planning applications. They give advice, councils decide, and almost none of that advice is published as data.
Active Travel England became a statutory consultee in 2023. In 2025-26 it responded to 2,045 consultations covering more than 521,000 homes and recommended improvements on applications comprising 191,000 homes. It holds every one of these in a casework system. Of its 79 publications, exactly two are transparency releases and both concern funding. Even its council capability ratings are published as a PDF.
Its own independent reviewer recommended creating a framework to record outcomes — meaning the body was not systematically tracking what happened to its advice, let alone publishing it.
The Environment Agency shows the other failure mode. It does publish flood objections at application level — 23,336 records across 426 authorities, including 633 where permission was granted against its advice, covering 347,425 homes. But the file carries no location of any kind, and for 7,011 records the Agency does not know what the council decided. Published and unmappable.
Meanwhile government consulted through January 2026 on cutting statutory consultee involvement by around 40%. A reform premised on consultee burden, conducted with essentially no public data on consultee outcomes.
The system
Sightline builds the outcome layer for statutory consultee advice: what was advised, what was decided, and what was built.
It starts with the Environment Agency data because it is already published and needs only resolution — the objections become mappable, the unknown outcomes get recovered, and the compliance picture becomes checkable rather than asserted.
It then extends the same template to Active Travel England. The casework exists in a structured system; the ask is publication, not creation. A working demonstration on flood data is the strongest possible argument for it.
And it gives the consultee reform an evidence base. If the case for cutting consultee involvement is that it delays development without improving it, that is a testable claim — and nobody can currently test it.
Worked examples
Two situations this system answers
Active Travel England advised on planning applications covering 521,000 homes in a single year and published none of it. Government is now cutting consultee involvement by around 40%, with no data on what that advice achieved.
Sightline records what was advised, what was decided and what got built — so the change can be judged on evidence rather than assumption.
A council overrides expert advice on a development. Residents want to know whether that is unusual. No published source can tell them.
Sightline publishes how often each council overrules expert advice, with the context — including that the rate has actually been flat for nine years, even though the raw numbers rose.
Data foundation
Every dataset below is open, or its access constraint is stated
| Dataset | Publisher | What it provides |
|---|---|---|
| Flood risk objections | Environment Agency | 23,336 records, 426 authorities, open licence. No spatial reference. Outcome unknown for 30%. |
| Water quality objections | Environment Agency | A second, smaller sheet in the same file with an objection reason field — largely untouched. |
| Active Travel England casework | ATE | Over 2,000 responses a year covering 521,000 homes. Held in a structured system, published nowhere. |
| Planning applications | MHCLG and authority portals | The decisions that consultee advice was given on. |
| Flood zones | Environment Agency | Open geospatial services with no key required — the layer objections need joining to. |
| New-build energy certificates | MHCLG | Whether advised-against development was actually completed and occupied. |
Capabilities
Benefits
For government
- Gives the consultee reform the evidence base it currently lacks, before the reform is enacted.
- Lets consultee bodies demonstrate their own value, which they presently cannot.
- Supplies the Environment Agency with the outcome data its own sampling approach cannot produce.
- Creates a reusable publication template for every statutory consultee, not just two.
For the public
- Communities can see whether expert advice about a development near them was followed.
- The trade-off between development speed and expert scrutiny becomes measurable rather than asserted.
- Bodies giving advice on public safety become accountable for whether it lands.
Delivery
Phasing
Risks & mitigations
The active travel half depends on a body agreeing to publish. The flood half does not, which is why it comes first and carries the argument.
Consultee reform proposes removing objections in some circumstances, which would discontinue the only national indicator. The archive makes that break visible rather than invisible.
Authorities will object to being ranked on overrides. Context is reported alongside, and the finding that the override rate has been flat for nine years is published as prominently as the rising counts.
Sources
All sources checked in August 2026. Figures carry the reference period of their source, which may differ from publication date. Where a figure could not be verified against a primary source it is not used.