An Avon gypsy has lost her High Court challenge to the structure plan produced by the four local councils that succeeded the region’s former county council.
Marlene Butler had asked Deputy Judge Rabinder Singh QC to quash the structure plan produced by Bath and North East Somerset District Council, Bristol City Council, South Gloucestershire District Council and North Somerset Council. She accused them of departing from the recommended management of gypsy sites.
However, rejecting the challenge, the judge found that the four authorities had believed that they were implementing the recommendations, and had not acted in a manner so irrational that it required their decision to be quashed.
The four councils had set up a joint committee to oversee the development of the structure plan, which was to replace the one produced by their predecessors, Avon County Council, and the draft version was put forward for public examination.
The panel conducting the examination recommended the creation of a separate policy requiring gypsy sites to be identified in local plans rather than in the structure plan. It also suggested that sites should be provided following an assessment of gypsies’ needs.
The committee then formulated a policy stating that appropriate provision of sites should be set out in local plans, and it laid down general criteria as to how these sites should be selected.
Butler subsequently claimed that the four councils had departed from the committee’s recommendations without giving notice, as they were required to do, of their intention not to accept the suggestions put forward following the public examination.
Rejecting that challenge, the judge said that it was difficult to see how it could be said that an authority had “intended” to depart from the recommendations when that authority believed that they were implementing the same. He added that the councils’ interpretation of the recommendations had not been irrational.
Butler v Bath and North East Somerset Council and others Queen’s Bench Division (Mr Rabinder Singh QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the division) 26 March 2003.
Timothy Jones (instructed by the Community Law Partnership, of Birmingham) appeared for the claimant; Nathalie Lieven (instructed by the solicitor to Bath and North East Somerset Council) appeared for the defendants.
References: PLS News 27/3/03
