Inspector’s decision — Reasons — Appeal from refusal of planning permission for residential flats — Secretary of State allowing appeal — Council ordered to pay appellant’s costs — Decision letter criticised for inadequacy of reasoning – High Court holding council’s refusal not unreasonable — Costs order unreasonable — Appeal allowed
This was an appeal against a decision by the Secretary of State for the Environment who allowed an appeal by Oxford Parklands Ltd (“Parklands”) against the council’s refusal of planning permission to build 30 residential flats, on land at the rear of Witney Lodge, Ducklington Road, Witney, Oxfordshire. The council also sought judicial review of the decision ordering them to pay Parklands’ costs. The site had been the subject of an application for planning permission for a nursing home for the elderly, which was refused by the council, but was allowed on appeal by the Secretary of State in February 1988. However, no grant for dwellinghouses or similar development had ever been made on the site and none which fell within Use Class C3. The outcome of the present appeal was influenced by the decision letter of February 1988.
The draft Oxfordshire local plan had been deposited in January 1994 shortly before the present inquiry. In essence, so far as this site was concerned, the planning considerations in both plans were similar. The site was not within the areas allocated for residential development. In his decision letter the inspector summarised the main issues to be “whether or not the building of flats here would unduly conflict with housing policies of the development plan or other policies … traffic noise … which might otherwise make the site unacceptable for residential use”.
Held Both decisions of the Secretary of State were quashed.
1. The single indivisible question which the court had to ask whenever a planning decision was challenged on the ground of a failure to give reasons, was whether the interests of the applicant had been substantially prejudiced by the deficiency of reasons given.
2. The requirement that an inspector should provide adequate reasons for his conclusions did not necessarily demand reasons of great length. Generally, it was not appropriate to subject the reasoning to attack by minute attention to each word nor to endeavor to find some possible ambiguity or infelicity of expression in the language and then castigate the reasoning as unsatisfactory.
3. In the present case, the decision letters did not deal adequately with the council’s case or disclose sufficiently the reasons which led to the conclusions on the major issues. In reality the reasoning process as ascertained from the decision letters seemed to involve the assertion that, as the site could be developed as a nursing home or offices, there was no proper planning consideration to prevent the development of the site for residential flats. Even assuming that that would be a satisfactory approach in another case, the council’s objections to the development merited closer analysis and consideration before they were rejected.
4. Taking an overall view of all the factors which were or should have been known or taken into account by the council when refusing planning permission, the decision to do so and consequent behaviour could not have been regarded as unreasonable. In those circumstances the order that the council should pay Parklands’ costs was itself unreasonable and was quashed.
Robert McCracken and Tim Comyn (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the council; Alice Robinson (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for the Environment; Rhodri Price Lewis (instructed by Cole & Cole, of Oxford) appeared for Parklands.
