Inspector allowing developer’s appeal for planning permission at designated site – Applicant planning authority seeking to quash inspector’s decision and seeking judicial review of interlocutory matter at inquiry – Whether inspector properly considered development plan policies – Whether inspector failing to adopt inquisitorial role – Applications dismissed
Lex Service plc (the second respondent) applied to Croydon London Borough Council (the applicants) for planning permission, for a used car sales office, workshops, canopy and associated car parking on a site designated for industrial development at Purley, Croydon. Following the applicants’ failure to determine the application within the required period, the second respondent appealed under section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Accordingly, a date was fixed for a public inquiry to be held on 2 September 1998. By July 1998 the applicant had received a second, similar application for development from the second respondent. Both applications were put to the applicants’ plan subcommittee, which, on 6 August 1998, resolved to refer the second application to a full committee, with the recommendation that it be permitted and made no decision on the first application. At the inquiry, the applicants sought an adjournment on the basis that their officers had no authority to contest the appeal. The inspector refused an adjournment, allowed the section 78 appeal and granted planning permission.
The applicants brought two applications. First, for judicial review and a declaration that the inspector had erred in law in refusing to grant an adjournment. Second, by application under section 288 of the 1990 Act, to quash the inspector’s substantive decision to allow the appeal, inter alia, on grounds that: (1) the inspector had failed to make clear whether he regarded the proposed development as being in accordance with the development plan and failed to consider the relevant policies; and (2) relying on Dyason v Secretary of State for the Environment [1998] 2 PLR 54, the inspector should have adopted an inquisitorial role because of the absence of the planning authority at the inquiry.
Held: The applications were dismissed.
1. The applicanta were almost entirely responsible for the delay and state of unreadiness at the inquiry. In fact, the applicants had effectively tied their own hands through their subcommittee’s decision of 6 August 1998. The inspector’s decision to refuse the adjournment was not wrong in principle or demonstrably wrong or unfair.
2. In Dyason (supra) the inspector had to play an enhanced, inquisitorial role, to resolve conflicts of evidence, whereas, in the present case, there were no conflicting propositions to be explored. The inspector was satisfied that he had sufficient evidence upon which to reach a planning decision on the merits. The applicant had simply put itself into a position where it could not cross-examine at the inquiry and it was not for the inspector to achieve cross-examination through his own questioning.
Mary Macpherson (instructed by the solicitor to Croydon London Borough Council) appeared for the applicants; Jonathan Karas (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first respondent; Christopher Katkowski QC (instructed by Berwin Leighton) appeared for the second respondent.
Sarah Addenbrooke, barrister
