Application for planning permission refused – Inspector allowing appeal against refusal – Council applying for inspector’s decision to be quashed – Whether inspector erred in law by failing to recognise local plan as part of development plan – Whether inspector giving adequate reasons for decision – Application dismissed
The second respondent, Moulton Football Club (the club), applied for planning permission for the development of a youth soccer school on the outskirts of the village of Moulton in Daventry. The applicant council refused the application. The club appealed. At the time of the appeal the Daventry district local plan had been adopted by resolution under section 43 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It had been challenged in the High Court, but its effect had not been suspended by an order made under section 287(2) of the Act. The club relied on policy RC4 of the local plan which stated: “Planning permission will normally be granted for small scale formal playing fields, pocket parks and outdoor recreational facilities associated with rural settlements and which are of a scale appropriate to the needs of that settlement provided they are situated within the confines or closely related to that settlement”.
The inspector allowed the club’s appeal. The council applied under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to quash the decision of the inspector on the ground that she had failed to determine the application in accordance with section 54(a) of the 1990 Act, and had failed to give adequate reasons for her decision. It was submitted that the inspector had accepted that policy RC4 was relevant to the determination of the appeal, but had failed to find as a fact that the local plan was part of the development plan. On that basis it was contended that the inevitable consequence of the inspector’s error was that she failed to have regard to a relevant consideration, namely that RC4 was part of the development plan, and that, since the appeal proposals did not accord with the policy, the appeal ought to have been dismissed, unless other relevant matters weighed in favour of the grant of permission.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. It was plainly correct that, once adopted, the local plan was part of the development plan until it was quashed under the Act. The inspector had considered the status of the plan as being in doubt and, accordingly, she had erred in her application of section 54(a) of the 1990 Act. However, she had given policy RC4 considerable weight and, accordingly, there was no real possibility that her conclusion would have been different if she had considered the plan as part of the development plan.
2. The inspector’s reasons had been clear and free from doubt and therefore it could not be concluded that she had failed to gave adequate reasons for her conclusion. Accordingly, the challenge to the inspector’s decision failed.
Timothy Leader (instructed by Hewitson Becke & Shaw) appeared for the applicants; Mary Macpherson (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first respondent, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions; the second respondent, Moulton Football Club, did not appear and was not represented.
Thomas Elliott, barrister
