The Supreme Court is today hearing a potentially landmark case brought by the Snowdonia National Park over planning permission to build an estate granted more than 50 years ago.
The case is being watched closely by the planning sector because of its potential to affect large housing developments that take a long time to complete.
The genesis of the case goes back to 1967 when the local county council (now succeeded by the Snowdonia National Park) granted planning permission for a 401-home development near Aberdyfi in Snowdonia.
Developers have been building on the site since. Various planning permissions have been granted, and there has been some litigation.
However, in 2017 the local planning authority decided that the 1967 planning permission was no longer valid as changes to the development over the past 50 years had made it impossible to implement the masterplan on which the 1967 planning permission was based.
Developer Hillside Parks challenged this and lost in 2020, when the Court of Appeal held that planning permission cannot lawfully be implemented where events since the grant of permission make the permitted development impossible.
Hillside appealed, and the case is today being heard in the Supreme Court by justices Lord Reed, Lord Briggs, Lord Sales, Lord Leggatt and Lady Rose.
At the hearing today, Hillside’s lawyer said the case was of great importance to the sector.
“The bigger the development, the bigger the problem, because the longer it will take and the more likely it is that things will change,” he said.
“That is why the planning sector sees this as one of the most important cases for a very long time. It may not be an HS2 or Heathrow, but in terms of real-world impact,” this is one of the most important cases for a very long time.
He said the developer was not trying to get more than it had been permitted. Instead, it was “trying to get exactly what was intended: development according to the masterplan, subject to changes.”
“When permission is sought for a house on plot 3 of Hillside Park, is it really common sense to say that the implementation of the permission renders incompatible the further implementation of 401 dwellings’ permission?”
However, Gwen Lewis QC, for the Snowdonia National Park Authority, disagreed.
Legislation does not allow “a pick and mix approach” in which “a developer should be able to pick and mix different parts of different planning permissions for the same land without having to obtain the approval of the local planning authority for the preferred mix.”
He said he was not taking an “absolutist approach”.
“There is some role for pragmatism… then the degree of change is inconsequential,” he said. “That is not this case.”
The hearing is scheduled to end today, with a ruling handed down in writing at a later date.
Hillside Parks Ltd v Snowdonia National Park Authority
Supreme Court (Lord Reed, Lord Briggs, Lord Sales, Lord Leggatt, Lady Rose) 4 July 2022
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