Applicant challenging local plan – Applicant filing claim at Central Office of High Court – Claim filed at wrong office and on wrong form – Applicant seeking order to transfer claim to Crown Office – Town and Country Planning Act 1990 section 287 – Application allowed
On 22 April 1999 the respondent local planning authority adopted a local plan that excluded the applicant’s land from its allocations for residential development. The applicant, a housebuilding company, sought to challenge the plan by virtue of an application under section 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. In accordance with section 287(4) of the Act, such an application had to be made within six weeks, namely by 3 June 1999. On 1 June 1999 the applicant filed a claim and particulars of claim in the central office of the High Court, which issued the claim on the same day. The claim specified that it was made under section 287 and that it sought to quash particular parts of the local plan. It was served on the respondents, which acknowledged service on 3 June 1999.
On 7 June 1999 the respondents wrote to the applicant, stating that the claim should have been filed in the Crown Office, in accordance with the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 Ord 94 r 2(1), and that, as the six-week period had by then expired, the plan could no longer be challenged. Furthermore, the respondents drew to the applicant’s attention the fact that the appropriate part 8 claim form had not been used, contrary to the practice direction. While the applicant accepted that there had been some breaches of procedural requirements, it submitted that these did not render void the section 287 application. The applicant sought an order that the claim be transferred to the Crown Office. The respondents submitted that the claim should be struck out.
Held: The application was allowed.
In the absence of clear wording in the statute, as a general rule the court should not infer the incorporation of the formal or other requirements of the relevant rules and practice directions as a precondition for compliance with the statutory time-limit. The claim form was filed in the Queen’s Bench Division within the relevant period, it was issued as a claim and was served upon the respondents. It would, unquestionably, have been read as a section 287 application, and was in fact recognised as such by the respondents. Although the claim form and its filing were in breach of Ord 94 r 2(1) and the practice direction, the application was not a nullity for the purposes of section 287 of the 1990 Act. The claim was to be transferred to the Crown Office: Watkins v Secretary of State for the Environment [1989] COD 417 considered.
Steven Gasztowicz (instructed by Forsters) appeared for the applicant; Russell Harris (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard, London agents for the solicitor to Chichester District Council) appeared for the respondents.
Sarah Addenbrooke, barrister