How to Prepare Attachments and a Document Index Before You Submit

Nobody reading your submission has the time or patience to open forty files looking for the one recording from 15 March. An index — even a simple one — does the work of pointing the reader straight at what matters. It also signals something about you: an organised submission reads as credible before anyone has even assessed the content, and a disorganised one invites doubt for reasons that have nothing to do with whether your case is actually strong.

Your diary or incident log — see our guide on what belongs in a factual record if you haven’t already built this.

Recordings, if you’ve made any — audio or video, each one dated and matched to a diary entry if possible.

Photos of anything relevant — physical evidence, the source of the noise if visible, anything a written description alone wouldn’t capture.

Correspondence copies — see our guide on keeping council correspondence together. Include what you sent and what you received.

Anything else referenced in your diary — if an entry mentions a specific piece of evidence, that evidence needs to actually be in the set you submit, not just described.

The index itself doesn’t need to be complicated. A numbered list works: each item gets a number, a one-line description, a date, and the file name or reference it corresponds to. “Item 14 — Audio recording, 15 March 2026, 11:20pm–11:45pm, bass-heavy music through party wall — file: recording_15mar.mp3.” Keep the numbering consistent across the index and the files themselves, so a reader can move between the two without hunting.

A file named IMG_4821.jpg tells a reader nothing. Rename it to something like photo_2026-03-15_front-garden.jpg before you submit — the date and a short description, consistently formatted across every file. This matters even with an index, because files can get separated from it, printed out of order, or forwarded on without the accompanying list.

Resist the urge to attach everything you’ve ever recorded or written. A submission padded with marginal or repetitive material is harder to assess, not more persuasive — it buries the strongest evidence under volume. Select what actually supports your account, reference it clearly, and leave the rest aside; you can always provide more if asked.

Indexing is far easier if you name and log things as you create them, rather than facing a backlog of unlabelled files the week before a deadline. Treat it as part of the same discipline as the diary itself: a few extra seconds per item, spent at the time, saves hours of reconstruction later.