A group of gypsies and travellers brought their long-running and complicated challenge to the planning powers of the government to the Court of Appeal today.
The group of five is challenging decisions by the Secretary of State to refuse them planning permission even though a planning inspector recommended that the planning permission should be granted.
The case is further complicated by a decision made by former Secretary of State Eric Pickles in 2013 to take control of all planning applications made for traveller and gypsy sites in the green belt.
The claimants in today’s hearing were among the applicants affected by this policy.
In a January 2015 High Court judgment Gilbart J said that the practice of earmarking all traveller and gypsy sites for special treatment was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore unlawful. However he also ruled that it was not unlawful for the Secretary of State to select cases on their merits for consideration himself.
In a judgment in December 2015 relating to today’s claimants, Cranston J ruled that Gilbart J’s earlier judgment didn’t make the Secretary of State’s decisions to refuse planning permission unlawful. He said that the individual decisions were “rational, lawful” and compliant with human rights law.
In a Court of Appeal hearing which stated yesterday, and continued today, lawyers for the claimants disagreed. They say that the Secretary of State shouldn’t have determined the planning case, and the Cranston J shouldn’t have ruled to the contrary.
However, lawyers for the Secretary of State say that the arguments brought in the current hearing are “a disguised re-arguing of the case at first instance” and should be dismissed.
Mulvenna and Anr v The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and ORS
Connors & Ors v The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government & Ors.
Court of Appeal (McFarlane LJ, Treacy LJ, Lindblom LJ) 17 and 18 March 2017
