Town and country planning — Planning permission refused on appeal — Green belt to be delineated on local plan — No local plan — Doubt as to extent of green belt — Whether appeal site within green belt — Whether applicant entitled to know green belt status of site
The applicants had sought planning permission for the development of a site at Great Lake Farm, Horley in Surrey. Planning permission was refused by the local planning authority. At the public local inquiry in March 1986 it was admitted by the local planning authority that the green belt status of the site was uncertain. The 1978 structure plan prepared by Surrey County Council, and approved by the Secretary of State for the Environment in 1980, contained two policies on the green belt. Outside urban areas and the larger rural settlements, the green belt policy was to be maintained from the county boundary with London to a line delineated to exclude Horley and its immediate surroundings. The precise line was to be delineated in the local plans. This has not yet been done.
Amendment 43 to the old county development plan provided that the general principles of the green belt policy should apply to undefined areas pending adoption of the structure plan and excluded sites should be treated as if the green belt policy applied to them. That was not inconsistent with the structure plan. However, in an earlier decision of the Secretary of State on land nearby, and within the immediate surroundings of Horley, the structure plan was treated as prevailing; on a basis consistent with that decision, the present site was never in the green belt. The local planning authority has since fixed provisional boundaries running right up to the built-up area. The applicants had urged before the inspector that the old county development plan must be accepted as the statutory plan until the local plans were made and approved. They contended that as the Secretary of State had not decided whether the site in question was within the green belt, it was difficult to see his reasons for disallowing the appeal and refusing planning permission.
Held The interaction between the two policies of the structure plan were not clear. It was not clear whether the applicants’ site, in an area contiguous with Horley was not “in the immediate surroundings of Horley” and therefore in the green belt. The inspector had come to no conclusion on the green belt status of the site. In considering whether the Secretary of State had justly refused planning permission on appeal, the applicants were entitled to know whether their site was within the green belt and whether green belt policies applied to it.
Robin Purchas QC and Craig Howell Williams (instructed by Merriman White & Co) appeared for the applicants; and John Laws (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for the Environment.
