Draft local plan showing objection site as lying within area of restraint – Applicant objecting – Inspector recommending local plan be modified and objection site be allocated for residential development – Council rejecting recommendation and adopting local plan – Application for council’s decision to be quashed – Whether council properly taking into account material considerations – Application allowed
The Northamptonshire Structure Plan Alteration no 1 was approved by the Secretary of State for the Environment in January 1992. Under policy RES1, 6,200 dwellings were to be built in South Northamptonshire District between 1988-2006 of which 1,000 were to accommodate the growth of Northampton. Policy RES4 envisaged that the majority of the rural housing growth would be accommodated within “limited development villages” (LDVs) and Old Trafford was identified as one of these in the rural areas local plan. In the deposit draft local plan, policy H1 provided for the development of 6,415 dwellings in the period of 1988-2006, and policy H4 and proposal RH2 provided for the development of sites in the identified LDVs. The objection site, an area of 6.7 ha in Old Trafford, was not one of the sites so identified. It was instead shown as lying within an area of restraint to which policy EV8 applied. The applicant, a developer, objected to the draft local plan on the ground that the site had not been allocated for residential development.
An inquiry was held into the local plan between January and July 1995. The inspector recommended that the local plan should be modified and that the site should be allocated for residential development. However, the council rejected the inspector’s recommendation and adopted the local plan. The applicant claimed, inter alia, that in rejecting the inspector’s recommendation the council had failed to take into account as a material consideration that, because of the site’s particular characteristics and location it ought to be allocated for development, notwithstanding that its allocation might not be necessary for the local plan to meet the structure plan requirement of the provision of 6,200 dwellings.
Held The application was allowed.
Although the sites allocated for residential development in the draft local plan would have produced an over provision of dwellings than the amount provided for in the structure plan, the inspector had recommended the allocation of the objection site for development because of its particular qualities. The council had then been required to make a decision on the level of over provision of dwellings by the local plan which would be acceptable, and then to weigh the degree of over provision against the qualities of the site. The council had failed to carry out that balancing exercise. They had, in fact, refused to consider the qualities of the site on the basis that the number of sites allocated in the local plan were sufficient to meet structure plan requirements, producing a small surplus, and that any greater surplus would fail to conform, or otherwise be unacceptable or undesirable, with the structure plan. Accordingly, the relevant parts of the structure plan were to be quashed.
Andrew Tait (instructed by Merriman White) appeared for the appellant; Graham Stoker (instructed by solicitor to South Northamptonshire District Council) appeared for the first respondents; the second respondent, the Secretary of State for the Environment, did not appear and was not represented.
