Planning permission – Green belt – Residential development – National planning policy framework – Planning permission refused on ground that appellant developer unable to demonstrate housing shortfall amounting to very special circumstances outweighing harm to green belt from proposed development – That decision reached by reference to housing target in revoked regional spatial strategy taking into account constraints on development – Whether planning inspector erring in using target in RSS – Decision quashed on ground that inspector failing to reach decision by reference to full objectively assessed housing needs as required by NPPF – Appeal dismissed
The appellant council refused an application by the first respondent developer for outline planning permission for a proposed development, including 116 dwellings, on open agricultural land located almost entirely within the metropolitan green belt in St Albans. One of the grounds of refusal related to the inappropriateness of such development in the green belt.
The appellants’ decision was upheld by the second respondent on appeal after an inquiry before a planning inspector. At the inquiry, the first respondent relied on the existence of a housing shortfall when evidence of projected housing need in St Albans was compared with the number of dwellings that could be accommodated on sites identified by the appellants as deliverable; the first respondent submitted that the shortfall amounted to very special circumstances sufficient to justify its development in the green belt.
Rejecting that submission, the inspector found that the appropriate annual housing target was 360 dwellings, that being the minimum annual average development figure for St Albans as set out in the revoked regional spatial strategy (RSS) for the area. The RSS recognised that those minimum figures took into account various constraints on development and might not be sufficient to meet housing need; however, the inspector took the view that those figures could be used to fill the “policy vacuum” in circumstances where the appellants had not yet produced a local plan, as required under the new regime of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), identifying a five-year supply of deliverable sites sufficient to meet the full, objectively assessed housing needs for their area. In her decision of February 2013, the inspector concluded that there was no unmet housing need and no very special circumstances to justify the first respondent’s development.
That decision was quashed in proceedings brought by the second respondent under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The judge held that the NPPF did not require or permit a decision-maker to adopt an old constraints-adjusted RSS figure, which did not even purport to reflect the full, objectively assessed needs for housing: see [2012] EWHC 2678 (Admin); [2013] PLSCS 216.
The appellants appealed. They contended that the inspector’s approach was justified by the qualification to para 47 of the NPPF, to the effect that the full, objectively assessed needs for housing were to be met by local plans “as far as is consistent with the policies set out in this framework”.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
Para 47 of the NPPF required local authorities, in proceeding with their local plans, to ensure that the full objectively assessed needs for housing were to be met as far as was consistent with the policies set out in the NPPF, including those concerning the protection of green belt land. Such a local plan could properly fall short of meeting the “full objectively assessed needs” for housing in its area if meeting those needs would conflict with policies on the green belt or other designations hostile to development, such as those on areas of outstanding natural beauty or national parks. In preparing the local plan for the district of St Albans, it was likely to prove significant that virtually all the undeveloped land in the district, outside the built-up areas, formed part of the metropolitan green belt. However, no such new local plan currently existed for that district and the most recent policy document containing a quantified assessment of housing requirements in the district was the RSS, which had been revoked in accordance with the government’s move away from strategically-based figures, thus leaving a policy vacuum in terms of the housing delivery target.
Where the housing requirements for the relevant area had not yet been established by the adoption of a local plan produced in accordance with the policies in the NPPF, the inspector had not been entitled to use a housing requirement figure derived from a revoked plan. The qualification in para 47(1), that the full housing needs were to be met “as far as is consistent with the policies set out in this Framework”, served as a reminder that the NPPF was to be read as a whole and had a specific role in advising local planning authorities when producing the local plan. It did not qualify housing needs but instead qualified the extent to which the local plan should go to meet those needs. The needs assessment, objectively arrived at, was not affected in advance of the production of the local plan. The inspector was not entitled to use a figure for housing requirements below the full objectively assessed needs figure until such time as the local plan process came up with a constrained figure. An inspector on a planning appeal was in no position to carry out the necessary exercise to arrive at such a figure and should not seek to carry out some sort of local plan process as part of determining the appeal.
It followed that the inspector had erred in adopting a constrained figure for housing need and finding, by reference to that figure, that there was no shortfall in housing land supply in the district. She should have concluded, using the correct policy approach, that there was such a shortfall since the supply fell below the objectively-assessed five-year requirement. In principle, a shortage of housing land when compared to the needs of an area was capable of amounting to very special circumstances justifying inappropriate development in the green belt within the meaning of paras 87 and 88 of the NPPF.
The existence of such a shortfall would not automatically mean that very special circumstances were demonstrated; an inspector was entitled to inspector to take into account the fact that broader, district-wide constraints existed. The ultimate decision might well turn on a number of factors, including the scale of the shortfall but also the context in which that shortfall was to be seen, which might include the extent of important planning constraints in the district as a whole. For example, where the much of the district in question was subject to green belt policies protecting much or most of the undeveloped land from development, the inspector might be entitled to conclude, as a matter of planning judgment, that some degree of shortfall in housing land supply was inevitable. However, in the instant case, where the inspector had erred by using a quantified figure for the five-year housing requirement which departed from the approach in the NPPF, her decision should be quashed.
Matthew Reed (instructed by the legal department of St Albans City and District Council) appeared for the appellants; Paul Stinchcombe QC and Ned Helme (instructed by Photiades Solicitors, of St Albans) appeared for the first respondent; the second respondent did not appear and was not represented.
Sally Dobson, barrister