1) Membership team complete pre-assessment quality assurance checks
The Membership team will carry out checks on your submission, to ensure that you have submitted everything that it required and it complies with the General Presentation requirements in the main guidance e.g., you are within the word limit range. There is more information about how to submit here.
If everything is complete on your submission, then the Membership Team will send you an email to confirm that is the case and it has been passed to the assessors to review. If there is an issue with your submission then the Membership Team will email to let you know and you will normally be given 24 hours to resolve the issue and resend the relevant details. Emails will be sent within two weeks of the submission deadline.
Top tip
It is the responsibility of the candidate, not the Membership team, to make sure your submission is ready to be passed to the assessors to review. If there are any issues with your submission, it might delay your assessment.
2) Trained assessors receive your submission
Two trained assessors receive your application.
All our assessors are required to complete mandatory annual training. There is also annual mid-year training and assessors receive ongoing support from the Membership Team. Assessors mark in line with requirements of the main guidance document for the route.
All assessors are Chartered members, they are experienced planners.
3) Trained assessors mark your submission independently
Two trained assessors review your submission independently from each other. This is key to ensuring fair and accurate results are issued.
Our assessors are paired together so that together they have a wide range of experiences, including different areas of planning specialisms, private and public sector experience, new assessors are paired with an experienced assessor, and they come from different geographical locations.
All submissions are checked for plagiarism and use of AI.
4) Assessors agree outcome and write feedback form
The assessors will confer on the marking of your submission and agree on the assessment outcomes as well as the main points to bring out in the feedback form.
If the assessors can not agree an outcome, the submission will be passed to a third assessor to mark, the third assessor will work with the original assessor pair to agree an assessment outcome.
One assessor will write the feedback form and pass to the other to confirm they are happy with it before the feedback form is returned to the Membership team.
The APC process is quality assured by the Membership Assessment Advisory Panel (MAAP), who consist of a cross section of members, and they ensure the correct assessment process is followed and all candidates are treated fairly.
Top tip
Did you know? You will receive feedback from the assessors regardless of whether you are successful or deferred.
5) Membership team complete post-assessment quality assurance checks
The Membership team check each of the feedback forms, making sure it is completed accurately, consistently and all comments are fair, justifiable and of a developmental nature to help you prepare in the event of a possible resubmission.
Once the feedback forms have been checked, the Membership team update our internal system with the assessment outcome and prepare the results day outcome emails.
Top tip
Did you know? All feedback forms are read by the Membership Team to check for consistency and accuracy.
6) You are notified of the outcome
On the published results day you will receive an outcome email and feedback form.
Result emails are sent throughout results day, so some candidates will receive their results before others, this is unavoidable. Please don’t read anything into if you receive your results early in the morning or later on in the day.
Congratulations if you are successful and become Chartered or Associate!
Check out all the member benefits and services we offer.