Alteration to structure plan — Proposal to create new town centre — Whether approval of alteration contrary to sequential approach in NPPG 8 — Whether NPPG 8 applicable — Appeal dismissed
The appellant was one of a number of companies that brought proceedings to challenge development plans for the site of a former steelworks at Ravenscraig. The site, which lay a short distance from Motherwell town centre, covered a large area and, although decontamination work had been carried out there and a spine road had been built, it otherwise stood empty and undeveloped. The second respondents, as joint structure plan committee for the area, had put forward a plan that emphasised the regeneration of town centres and envisaged development at Ravenscraig, including business, residential, sports and recreational development and improved transport links, with a view to “testing the potential for creating a new town centre for the area”. However, a list of town centre renewal priorities in schedule 1(a) to the plan did not include Ravenscraig.
Developers subsequently applied for planning permission for a mixed-use development at the Ravenscraig steelworks site, including a new town centre. Meanwhile, the first respondents approved the structure plan. The local planning authority and the second respondents then sought approval for an alteration to the plan to add Ravenscraig to the list in schedule 1(a).
The first respondents approved that alteration. In reaching their decision, they took the view that the government guidance in NPPG 8, which required a sequential approach to retail development giving priority to town centre sites, was not directly applicable to the creation of a new town centre. An appeal by the appellant against that decision was refused and it appealed further. It contended that: (i) the first respondents had misinterpreted NPPG 8 and had erred in finding that it was not applicable; and (ii) Ravenscraig could not be added to the list in schedule 1(a) to the plan since it was not an existing town centre. The second respondents argued that since the development included a town centre and any proposed retail development would take place within in it, the retail development accorded with the sequential approach.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
(1) NPPG 8 was designed to afford support to existing town centres, rather than to encourage developments in other areas. Accordingly, the mere fact that the retail development at Ravenscraig would take place in a projected town centre did not mean that it was automatically to be given priority under the sequential approach. However, the first respondents had not been obliged to follow the sequential approach. That approach presupposed that the development in question was simply a retail or similar development that could take place in an existing town centre, or, if the development was too large, could be broken down so as to make a better fit with existing developments in the town centre. That approach could not sensibly be applied to the issue that the first respondents had to consider, namely an alteration to the structure plan that would support the development of a town centre at Ravenscraig, since the retail element did not stand alone, but was an integral part of a scheme for the creation of a new town centre, which was in turn part of a larger scheme for the redevelopment of the entire area. The whole point was that the town centre was to be at Ravenscraig, and the first respondents could not carve out the retail elements, and require them to be sited in an existing town centre, without completely altering or destroying the very nature of the proposed development. They had been obliged to proceed on the basis that the proposed alteration related to an entire town centre, and they had been fully justified in taking the view that the sequential approach did not apply.
(2) Although the general policy of NPPG 8 was the protection of existing town centres, and the effect of adding Ravenscraig to schedule 1(a) was not to protect an existing town centre, the vision behind the structure plan was that a town centre should be located on that site as part of a larger development. Accordingly, it made sense for the structure plan to list the site so as to try to promote investment in it and ensure that its viability was not undermined in advance by, for example, large retail or leisure developments on other sites in the vicinity.
Heriot Currie QC and Jonathan Lake (instructed by Semple Fraser LLP, of Edinburgh) appeared for the appellant; Gerry Moynihan QC and James Wolffe (instructed by the legal department of the Scottish Executive) appeared for the first respondents; Richard Keen QC and James Mure (instructed by Simpson & Marwick, of Edinburgh) appeared for the second respondents.
Sally Dobson, barrister
