Conservation charity the Spitalfields Historic Building Trust has failed in a Court of Appeal bid to stop the Old Truman Brewery from building an office block on Brick Lane, E1.
The Old Truman Brewery applied for planning permission in May 2020 to redevelop land on the corner of Brick Land and Woodseer Street by building a five-floor office building with ground-floor shops and a gym.
The application was met with strong local opposition. There were more than 7,000 individual objections, including one from the trust, a charity set up by architectural historian, writer and TV presenter Dan Cruickshank. According to court documents, the main objections were over the introduction of large companies to the area, the effect on local businesses, gentrification and concerns that the development would obscure the view of the old brewery’s chimney. Objectors also argued that the development would drive up rents in the area.
The application went to Tower Hamlets Council’s planning committee in September 2021 and, despite the objections, the committee granted planning permission the following month. The trust started legal action in an attempt to overturn the decision on procedural grounds.
The case went to trial at the High Court in London last year, and the trust lost. However, it was granted permission to appeal. At the appeal, lawyers for the trust focused on a rule used by the council that stated that members of the Development Committee were told that they may not vote on the application at the second of the two committee meetings if they had not been present at the first meeting. They argued that this rule was unlawful, and the committee should reconsider its decision.
However, in a ruling handed down on Friday, a three-judge panel of appeal court judges disagreed, saying that the argument risked invalidating potentially hundreds of council decisions across the country.
In the ruling, judge Sir Keith Lindblom, Senior President of Tribunals, said the council’s rule had not been “irrational,” and was in fact “perfectly logical and sensible.” More importantly, he ruled that it was also something that the council had the legal power to do.
A second appeal judge, Lord Justice Coulson, said the court should be careful about regulating local authorities’ decision-making procedures.
“It seems to me that local authorities must be permitted to regulate their proceedings and business without interference, unless they create a restriction which is unlawful (because it breaches an express statutory provision), or is irrational,” he said.
“In the present case, it is accepted that the rule in question is not irrational, and there is no statutory provision which would make the restriction unlawful.”
Spitalfields Historic Building Trust v London Borough of Tower Hamlets and another
Court of Appeal (Lindblom LJ, Coulson LJ, Bean LJ) 28 July 2023
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