Adverse effect of supermarket on rural economy — Local plan prohibiting development in flood-risk area — Whether inspector misapplied national policies — Inspector under no obligation to explain decision in detail — Claim dismissed
An application was made for planning permission to erect a supermarket in the centre of a small market town on a site within a local flood plain that was at risk of flooding. Following an appeal and a public inquiry, the first defendant’s inspector granted planning permission. He found that the scheme offered potential benefits, and that its harmful effect upon the local food industry and the economy of the rural hinterland would be limited. Although the local plan prohibited development in flood-risk areas, the inspector followed PPG 25, which advised following a sequential test to identify alternative, lower-risk options.
The claimants challenged the inspector’s decision under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. They claimed that the inspector had failed to give his finding of harm adequate or any weight when balancing it against the potential for benefit, or, alternatively, that he had failed adequately to explain his reasoning. They also claimed that the inspector had misapplied the sequential test as detailed in PPG 25, by failing to apply a risk-based approach to his decision on development control, and had not considered whether alternative reasonable options were available in a lower-risk category.
Held: The claim was dismissed.
Although the inspector was under an obligation to give reasons for his decision, he was not required to rehearse every argument in detail because his reasoning was addressed to parties who were already familiar with the arguments advanced at the inquiry. The decision letter was to be read as a whole, and the inspector had stated his reasoning so as to enable the informed reader to understand how he had arrived at his conclusion on the principal controversial issues.
Although the issue of potential harm was not listed as a separate material consideration in the inspector’s report, it was considered under the claimants’ argument on the local rural economy. The inspector had paid sufficient detailed consideration to the matter, and was under no duty to articulate the reason why it did not outweigh the other considerations, since the weight to be given to any material consideration was a matter of planning judgment and was therefore always a matter for the decision maker. Since it was common ground at the inquiry that the land was at risk of flooding, it must have been the case that if an alternative site had been available it would have been considered for development. The fact that this had not been done supported the conclusion that the proposal satisfied the provisions in PPG 25 with regard to flood-risk management. Following Boulevard Land Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions [1998] JPL 983, the absence of a reference to a particular policy was not of itself sufficient to demonstrate that the policy had been left out of account. As national planning policies (and their advice regarding flood-risk management) formed part of the background to every planning appeal, it was to be assumed that the inspector had taken them into account even if he had not mentioned them in detail. Neither the issue of flooding nor the provisions with regard to flooding contained in government guidance papers were addressed by the claimants at the public inquiry. Flooding risks were not a principal issue of dispute among the parties, and, therefore, the inspector did not have to make specific reference to them in his report.
Michael Bedford (instructed by Rodwell & Co, of Halesworth) appeared for the claimants; James Maurici (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first defendant; Richard Ground (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the interested party, Wyncote Developments Ltd.
Vivienne Lane, barrister