Town and country planning — Refusal of planning permission for caravan — Appeal to Secretary of State — Inspector dismisses appeal — Application to quash decision — Whether inspector failed to consider time-limited planning permission — Whether breach of rules of natural justice — Whether site could have been protected by existing housing
In June 1986 the applicants sought planning permission to station a caravan on a site they wanted to use as a market garden in Cleveland. The local planning authority refused planning permission on the grounds that the development would have been contrary to the Cleveland structure plan; the caravan amounted to a dwelling and would have been visually inappropriate; and there would have been an increase in vehicular movements on and off the adjoining public highway to the detriment of safety.
The applicants appealed to the Secretary of State for the Environment on the grounds that (1) permanent personnel were necessary on the site to prevent damage to goods and machinery; and (2) the site was a four-acre market garden and viable as an agricultural holding. In November 1986 the inspector issued his decision dismissing the appeal. The applicants applied under section 245(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 to challenge that decision on grounds, inter alia, that the inspector had failed to consider the possibility of granting planning permission for a limited period of time only; and that there had been a breach of natural justice in that the applicants had not been given an opportunity of putting forward representations on the question of whether the site could be adequately protected using existing housing.
Held The decision of the Secretary of State by his inspector was quashed. There was no duty on the inspector to consider a more restricted planning permission, such as time-limit: see Mason v Secretary of State for the Environment [1984] JPL 332. But the conclusion of the inspector that traffic slowed down to enter or leave the site, was a new objection; the applicants had had no chance to meet this objection, which was anyway attributable to the use of the site as a market garden and not simply attributable to the proposed caravan. The inspector had also concluded that the applicants’ intention to run the site as a market garden and their competence to do so were in doubt. The applicants were therefore entitled to complain that if the inspector had had doubts he should have given them a chance to deal with them. The inspector had not observed the rules of procedural fairness.
Richard Merritt (instructed by Punch Robson, of Middlesbrough) appeared for the applicants; Philip Havers (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the respondent Secretary of State for the Environment; the second respondent, the local planning authority, did not appear and was not represented.
