In R (on the application of Save North St Albans Green Belt and others) v St Albans City and District Council [2022] EWHC 2087 (Admin), the High Court dismissed a challenge to the decision of St Albans City and District Council to grant outline planning permission for up to 150 dwellings in the Hertfordshire green belt. The focus of this case was on the consistency of the decisions made by the council, as there were past decisions refusing applications for smaller residential developments on the same site due to its location within the green belt.
On 12 January 2022, the council granted the planning permission above to the interested parties. An action group formed by local residents, a committee member of that group and its treasurer challenged the council’s decision.
The claimants challenged the decision on five grounds, but later decided to pursue only three. First, the advice in the officer’s report was misleading due to the reasons given to conclude that it was justifiable to depart from the previous decisions. The allegedly misleading reasons were that the area’s housing land supply had significantly worsened, that the local plan had been withdrawn while the new plan was at a very early stage and no weight could be applied to it in decision making, and that the harm to the green belt would be only low to moderate instead of significant as assessed in previous decisions. Second, the council failed to give adequate reasons for its decision to depart from its previous decisions. Third, the report was misleading because it relied on material based on an earlier proposal for only 132 dwellings, whereas the current proposal was for up to 150 dwellings.
Regarding ground 1, Mrs Justice Lang considered that the officer was entitled, based on the officer’s planning judgment, to advise the councillors regarding the increased shortfall in housing land supply and that there was sufficient basis on which the officer could properly make this judgment. Similarly, the officer was entitled to make a distinction between the weight given to the withdrawn local plan and the new early stage local plan. Finally, regarding the evaluation of the impact to the green belt, Lang J considered that this matter fell “squarely within the scope of the officer’s planning judgment, and it cannot be challenged in this court”.
Regarding ground 2, she considered that the council was not under a statutory duty to give reasons for the grant of planning permission and, if a common law duty did arise, then the reasons given were sufficient.
Regarding ground 3, she considered that this was only an outline application with all matters reserved except for access, so the precise form of the development would be determined later. Therefore, it was “not irrational for the officer to conclude that the information provided in support of the application enabled a judgment to be reached on the acceptability of a 150-dwelling scheme”.
This case shows that development can be carried out in areas with past refusals if material considerations have changed since that time (ie if the housing land supply has significantly worsened), which is a matter that falls entirely on the decision-maker’s discretion.
Stefano D’Ambrosio is a solicitor in the planning & environmental team at Irwin Mitchell
