Buckinghamshire Council has survived a court challenge to its local plan brought by an environmental charity set up to promote sustainable development in the Wycombe area.
Charity Keep Bourne End Green argues that Wycombe District’s latests local plan, which was adopted in August 2019 on the recommendation of a government planning inspector, should be invalidated due to “numerous flaws” in the inspector’s reasoning.
Specifically, the group objects to the council’s decision to remove 32 hectares of land from the green belt by the village of Bourne End and use it to build 467 dwellings.
The district of Wycombe is notoriously difficult to build on: almost half of the total areas is in the green belt and more than 70% of is in the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty.
The case was heard in an online hearing of the High Court earlier this month and in a ruling yesterday the trial judge, Mr Justice Holgate, dismissed all of the charity’s points.
While the charity’s objections are wide – in his ruling the judge called them an “unparticularised assertion of irrationality,” the main thrust of its case was that the decision was made based on accurate population data, and the inspector misinterpreted the “exceptional circumstances” needed to take land out of the green belt.
In a long a detailed ruling, the judge stated that it was not his role to “consider the merits of the council’s proposed policy or the objections made to it”, it was to decide whether an error of law had been made.
On the calculation of housing need, the judge ruled that it was a decision best made by planning officers and not judges.
“There have been many attempts over he last few years to entice the courts into making pronouncements on the methods used to address objectively assessed housing need,” he said in his ruling. “Repeatedly the response has been that it is a matter of planning judgment for the decision-maker and not for the courts.”
In fact, the whole issue is a “highly technical debate” that is “not a matter for argument, let alone resolution, in the courts”.
There was no error of law, the judge ruled.
As for the green belt issue, the judge said in his ruling that the issue of “exceptional circumstances” can be “judicially over-analysed,” and he was satisfied that no error of public law had taken place.
“The claim for statutory review is dismissed.”
Keep Bourne End Green v (1) Buckinghamshire Council (Formerly Wycombe District Council) (2) the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
Planning Court (Holgate J) 23 July 2020
James Burton (instructed by the Claimant directly) for the claimant. Paul Brown QC and Mr Guy Williams (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard LLP) for the first defendant. Estelle Dehon (instructed by Government Legal Department) for the second defendant. John Litton QC (instructed by Eversheds Sutherland LLP) for the first interested party
