It will sometimes be convenient to deal with two planning appeals at one inquiry, where the facts justify this. It may also, on occasion, be essential to do so in the interests of consistency in decision-making. For instance, in Fox Strategic Land and Property Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2012] EWHC 444 (Admin); [2012] PLSCS 56, the judge was critical of the Secretary of State for refusing to determine two appeals together. However, bearing in mind the entitlement of each appellant to a lawfully and adequately reasoned decision on the merits of its appeal, the inspector must exercise care.
In Taylor and others v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2012] EWHC 684 (Admin) the inquiry dealt with conjoined appeals relating to two separate but adjoining sites in the green belt, where enforcement notices had been served alleging that the occupiers had made a material change of use in the land from agricultural use to use for residential caravans for gypsy families with associated operational development. Save for extending time for compliance, the inspector dismissed both appeals.
Both appellants challenged the inspector’s decision in the High Court, contending principally that the inspector had failed to consider the two appeals separately, but treated them as giving rise to one decision ignoring material differences between the two sites and appeals. The obvious differences were the fact that the status of one appellant as a gypsy was not wholly clear-cut, one site was less intensively developed than the other and in one case there was a possible fallback argument.
The court rejected this contention. The judge began by stating that no complaint could be made of the fact that the appeals were dealt with by the same inspector at a single conjoined inquiry, nor that the decisions were conveyed in a single decision letter. That much was obviously unobjectionable in law. Moreover, the inspector had identified early on that the crucial issue in each case was whether there were material considerations of sufficient weight clearly to outweigh the harm from these inappropriate developments in the green belt. Thereafter, he had carefully divided his report into sections dealing with individual factors and common factors. In each case, he had concluded that the appellant had failed to show that the very special circumstances required to overcome the harm done to the green belt existed.
John Martin is a freelance writer
