My purely anecdotal experience is that Planning Inspectors fight shy of awarding costs at planning appeals, which only serves to perpetuate bad conduct (on both sides) in the planning process.  In litigation it is the norm that the loser pays the costs of the winner, but in planning appeals it only arises where behaviour has been unreasonable - and Inspectors are often loathe to label a party as unreasonable.  And whilst I am on the subject, can Inspectors please think through the consequences of making partial awards of costs - as it can often be more trouble than it is worth trying to get these agreed by the other side.