Spelthorne Council have failed in their attempts to introduce requirements for the provision of affordable housing in excess of those set out in government planning circulars.
The council sought to bring in a policy stipulating that provision for affordable housing should be made in all housing developments of more than 0.1ha in their area. However, the Environment Secretary directed that they should not depart from the requirements in a planning circular that the threshold should be 1ha, or somewhere between 0.5 and 1ha where local circumstances merited it.
The secretary of state took the view that the council, in seeking to set the lower threshold, had failed to take into account the impact on the affordable housing pool of other factors, such as vacant housing units and the conversion of larger houses and offices to multiple residential use.
Challenging that decision in the High Court, the council argued that the 0.1ha threshold was justified for the area if the affordable housing quotas required by the year 2006 were to be achieved. They maintained that the secretary of state had been wrong to find they had not made out a strong enough case for special treatment.
Ruling against the council, however, Harrison J said he did not consider the decision under challenge to have been unreasonable, and found that the secretary of state had been entitled to take the view, on the evidence before him, that there was no special case for a lower threshold.
In the judges view, the secretary of state had clearly considered whether local circumstances justified a departure from the guidance and concluded that it did not. Harrison J did not think that his reasons for that conclusion could be said to be ambiguous or unintelligible.
ALIGN=”JUSTIFY”>Spelthorne Borough Council v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions Queens Bench Division (Harrison J) 21 November 2000
Mathew Horton QC and Mary Macpherson (instructed by Richard Lewis, of Staines) appeared for the applicants; Philip Sales (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the respondent.
PLS News 22/11/00
