A north-west London resident has been left with a bill for potentially thousands of pounds of legal costs after bringing a “hopeless” High Court challenge to a planning permission decision.
The case centres on planning permission granted in April by Barnet Council to build two three-storey buildings on a brownfield site off Flower Land, NW4.
The plot is located behind other houses and is reached by a 100m drive.
Barnet resident Karin Harrison and other local residents have been opposing development on this site since at least 2019, according to a ruling handed down by the High Court this week.
In May, Harrison applied on paper for a judicial review of the decision, the ruling said. Her objection was two pages long and was rejected by a High Court judge without a hearing, as is the process, in July.
Harrison then challenged this decision and sought a hearing before a High Court judge, which took place earlier this month.
Her almost 20-page ground of claim included allegations about incorrectly filled forms by the developer, allegations that the council’s planning officers misled the council’s planning committee, and suggestions that a drive violated equality and diversity rules.
In a ruling handed down this week, High Court judge Mr Justice Julian Knowles dismissed all her allegations, saying they were not arguable, and were mostly “hopeless”.
Usually, the council would not be entitled to seek legal costs for this sort of oral hearing. However, the judge said that there were “exceptional reasons for justifying the award to the council of its costs of attending the hearing (as well as preparing the acknowledgement of service and summary grounds)”.
“Most if not all of the claimant’s arguments were not just devoid of merit, but can properly be labelled hopeless,” the judge said.
“They had been rejected in round terms by the single judge and some of them dismissed as ‘bare, unparticularised allegations’, an assessment I agree with. For example, in 2020 the council informed the claimant and her husband that the existence of the restrictive covenant was not relevant to an application for planning permission. Yet the claimant maintained her reliance on the restrictive covenant without any supporting authority or anything substantial in the way of principled argument.
“If she thought the council had written to her inappropriately, there were other remedies open to her besides judicial review.”
In addition, Harrison filed substantial submissions in greatly expanded pleadings following the refusal of permission, to which the council needed to respond.
“Perhaps most importantly, she also maintained her serious accusations of misconduct, bias and bad faith against the council and its officers, and sought sanctions, despite the single judge’s clear statement that her allegation that the officers had been ‘determined to promote the developer’s profit’ was ‘without foundation’ and the basis of her argument had no merit.
“I order the claimant to pay the council’s costs of the Acknowledgment of Service and their costs for attending the hearing before me,” he ruled.
R (on the application of Karin Harrison) v London Borough of Barnet and others
Planning Court, Leeds, (Mr Justice Julian Knowles) 10 October 2021
