Planning application – Councillors on planning committee attending meeting of objectors although not commenting on application – Two councillors not attending site visit – Councillors abstaining from vote on those grounds – Consents granted — Whether abstention due to erroneous advice from monitoring officer – Whether serious irregularity resulting in unlawfulness of decision reached on vote – Appeal allowed
The appellant local planning authority received an application from National Grid for planning permission and hazardous substances consent to construct an above-ground installation (AGI) for natural gas pressure reduction. Four councillors, who were members of the appellants’ planning committee, attended a public meeting of the Ratepayers’ Party, a registered political group of which they were members, at which local residents, including the respondent, presented their objections to the proposed AGI. Subsequently, on the advice of the appellants’ monitoring officer, the four councillors each made a declaration that they had not expressed any opinion on the planning application at that meeting.
The planning committee organised a site visit. The monitoring officer advised planning committee members that failure to attend would not prevent them from participating in the subsequent debate and decision, but would risk calling into question the decision-making process. Two of the four councillors failed to attend the site visit. All four received further advice from the monitoring officer on the occasion of the subsequent vote on the application and decided to absent themselves from that vote. The consents were granted by 13 votes to 12.
The respondent brought judicial review proceedings, seeking to quash the consents on the ground of serious procedural irregularity. She contended that the decision of the four councillors to abstain from the vote resulted from a misapprehension of the law, based upon erroneous advice given to them by the monitoring officer. That advice had led them to believe that they should not take part in the vote following their attendance at the Ratepayers’ Party meeting and their non-attendance at the site visit.
Allowing the claim, the judge held that the councillors had done nothing wrong and that so far as they had felt under pressure not to participate in the vote owing to incorrect advice, that had affected the legality of the decision reached on the vote. The appellants appealed.
Held: The appeal was allowed.
The evidence before the judge showed that the councillors had been left to make their own decisions and to exercise their own judgment about voting on the planning application. They had not been directed or pressurised to abstain from voting or to leave the planning committee meeting prior to the vote. The monitoring officer had not told them that they could not participate in the meeting. They had merely been advised of the difficulties in terms of their absence from the site visit and their attendant of the Ratepayers’ Party meeting. In deciding not to vote, the councillors had exercised their own judgment in the light of the advice that was given. None of that advice was incorrect or amounted to an immaterial consideration giving rise to procedural irregularity or unlawfulness in the granting of the consents.
Anthony Porten QC (instructed by the legal department of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council) appeared for the appellants; David Wolfe (instructed by Richard Buxton, of Cambridge) appeared for the respondent.
Sally Dobson, barrister
