Local plan review – RPG 6 – Requirement for review of green-belt boundary through development plan process – Boundary reviewed as part of structure plan review – Appellants’ land not excluded from green belt – Respondents conducting local plan review – Inspector recommending against exclusion of part of appellants’ land from green belt – Whether misapplying RPG 6 policy – Whether review required at both structure plan and local plan stage – Appeal dismissed
In 2002, the respondent council, as part of the joint strategic local planning authority, participated in a review of the structure plan for their area. The review incorporated an assessment of Cambridge green-belt boundaries as provided for by policy 24 of RPG 6; that policy required a consideration of whether sites could be released for development without significant detriment to the green belt and whether they were suitable for development. Accordingly, the draft structure plan contained detailed green-belt policies that assessed specific sites and identified those that could be released without significant detriment and those that could not. The latter included a site in which the appellants had an interest. Their proposals, seeking the release of their site for a strategic urban extension of 3,500 dwellings, were rejected; however, the plan as finally approved in 2003 stated that smaller, non-strategic sites might be identified in the preparation of local plans.
In 2004, the respondents undertook a local plan review. The appellants sought to have a smaller area of their land allocated for a mixed-use development incorporating 350 to 400 houses. Following a local plan inquiry, the inspector recommended that the appellants’ site should not be removed from the green belt because there were no exceptional circumstances within PPG 2 to justify that course. The respondents resolved to adopt the plan.
The appellants applied to quash the respondents’ resolution under section 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. They contended that the inspector had erred in: (i) failing to read policy 24 as requiring an RPG 6 review of locations at the local as well as the structure plan stage; (ii) applying a test of “exceptional circumstances” instead of “significant detriment” to the release of green-belt land; and (iii) failing to consider the significant detriment issue before proceeding to suitability for development as the second limb. That claim was dismissed in the court below: see [2007] EWHC 1753 (Admin); [2007] PLSCS 161. The appellants appealed.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
Policy 24 of RPG 6 intended a single review by the requisite local planning authorities at structure plan stage. Policy 24 did not of itself require an alteration of the Cambridge green-belt boundaries, but merely required a sequential review of the elements set out in the policy, which, depending upon where they led, might or might not prompt an alteration on PPG 2 “exceptional circumstances” grounds at either stage of the development plan process. The review in which the respondents had participated, and the resulting, unusually specific structure plan, complied with the requirements of policy 24. That was not the only opportunity to secure the release of land from the green belt, since there might be an opportunity at local plan stage to consider non-strategic areas not already identified for release, subject to policy 24 and the PPG 2 requirement of “exceptional circumstances”.
The inspector had not applied the wrong test. The “without significant detriment” formula in policy 24 of did not qualify, and was not inconsistent with, an overall PPG 2 test of exceptional circumstances. The absence of significant detriment to green belt purposes formed part of a wider composite of material planning factors, including suitability for development, that went to the question of whether there were, in relation to any particular location, “exceptional circumstances” within PPG 2 for altering the green belt so as to release it for development.
Policy 24 did not require the tests of “significant detriment” and “suitability for development” to be applied sequentially. If green-belt land were to retain the level of protection that PPG 2 required, and that RPG 6 acknowledged, they should be altered only when, matched against proposed or potential development, there were in overall planning terms “exceptional circumstances” for alteration. That was normally a single decision to be made in the development plan process.
John Steel QC and Robert White (instructed by Mills & Reeve, of Cambridge) appeared for the appellants; Simon Bird (instructed by the legal department of Cambridge City Council) appeared for the respondents.
Sally Dobson, barrister
