Applicant granted outline planning permission – Applicant appealing against council’s failure to determine its application for approval of reserved matters – Inspector dismissing appeal – Whether inspector providing adequate reasons – Application allowed
In April 1997 the second respondents, Chelmsford Borough Council, granted the applicant outline planning permission for residential development on some 11ha of land in Chelmsford. In November 1997 the applicant made an application to the council for approval of reserved matters. In January 1998 the environment committee deferred a decision. The applicant appealed against the council’s failure to determine the application. Following an inquiry in June 1998, the inspector upheld detailed criticisms levelled by the council at the applicant’s submitted layout of the housing for the south-western quadrant. The applicant applied pursuant to section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to quash the inspector’s decision on the ground that the inspector had failed to provide adequate reasons for his decision. The applicant submitted that its interests had been substantially prejudiced by the deficiency of the inspector’s reasons, as it was unable to make a reasonable assessment of the prospects of succeeding in an application for some alternative form of development.
Held The application was allowed.
The applicant had been substantially prejudiced by the inspector’s failure to give an adequate explanation his rejection of the details in terms that enabled it to reasonably form a view of what alternative layout and design would achieve approval. Save Britain’s Heritage v Number 1 Poultry Ltd [1991] 3 PLR 17 applied with particular force to applications for approval of reserved matters. In such cases the principle of the development was established by the grant of outline permission, so that both applicant and planning authority had moved from the question of whether any development of the type proposed was acceptable to the question of the form that the development should take.
An inspector, in dismissing an appeal against the refusal of approval for reserved matters, should give reasons for doing so, which, so far as possible, enabled the applicant to understand what amendments needed to be made to his proposals to make them acceptable. It was not for an inspector, any more than it was for a local planning authority, to design the scheme for the applicant, but there would be cases where the inspector would be able to explain his reasons for rejecting the proposals in such a way as to enable the applicant to understand what amendments he needed to make in order to achieve approval. That may entail a fuller explanation than in the case of proposals that were fundamentally unacceptable. In the present case, at a number of points, the inspector could have explained his reasons in such a way, and failure to do so prejudiced the applicant.
Peter Village (instructed by Pitmans, of Reading) appeared for the applicant; Ian Albutt (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first respondent; the second respondents, Chelmsford Borough Council, did not appear and were not represented.
Sarah Addenbrooke, barrister