Planning application — Masterplan — Outline planning permission — Reserved matters — Local authority registering application by interested party for approval of reserved matters as lawful — Whether approval application coming within ambit of outline planning permission — Claim allowed
A development company (the interested party) submitted an application for outline planning permission for residential and related development supported by a masterplan and accompanying written statement. The defendant local planning authority granted outline permission for, inter alia, residential development including affordable homes, distributor roads and link roads and a district centre that incorporated new community uses and comprised A1, A2, A3, D1 and D2 uses.
The permission was subject to condition 16, which defined the range of goods and services that could be provided in the shopping centre. It also stated that the district centre could include an element of ancillary residential accommodation but that full details of all uses in the centre were to be submitted as reserved matters.
The interested party subsequently submitted a reserved matters application, together with a development brief addendum, seeking approval for a number of district centre uses as well as 71 houses and 23 affordable flats and associated car parking. The addendum amended the development brief written statement to provide for additional residential development in what was originally described as the district centre area.
The defendants registered the application as valid under the governing outline planning permission but the claimant, who was a local resident, applied for judicial review of that decision on the ground that it fell outside the scope of the permission so that a fresh planning permission should be made. The claimant contended that, to the extent that the residential proposals were located on the land intended for the district centre in the masterplan, they were allocated for that use under the parent outline planning permission and it was not within the defendants’ power to accept or approve an application for residential development, except in so far as it was ancillary to the shops, which this proposal was not.
The defendants did not seek to challenge the application but the interested party argued that the parent planning permission did not define the area of land to be used as the district centre and did not confine the proposals to be submitted for approval of reserved matters either to the masterplan or the development brief.
Held: The claim was allowed.
The decision to register the application for approval was unlawful.
Although the masterplan that accompanied the original application for outline planning permission was intended to be illustrative rather than definitive in a detailed way, it still had to illustrate something. It could not just be set aside and replaced with a substantial amount of residential development.
Although minor revisions of boundaries and realignment of highways were within the scope of the plan, what was illustrated on the plan and required to be produced in the designated area was district centre community uses and not residential development.
It might be said that there was a planning case for more residential developments but that would require a new outline planning application rather than an adjustment to the original plan.
The claimant appeared in person; the defendants did not appear and were not represented; Mark Lowe QC (instructed by Davies & Partners, of Barnwood) appeared for the interested party.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
