Road improvements — Recognised service area need — Several applications for planning permission refused — Applicant wanting public inquiry — Appeal by way of written representations for rival proposal — Secretary of State refusing applicant’s request that all appeals be heard together — Whether merits of other sites were relevant matter for determination of appeal — Issue of comparability — Whether decision valid — High court finding for applicant — Secretary of State’s appeal dismissed
The appeal concerned applications for planning permission for service areas along the A47 in Norfolk. The Department of Transport specified one service area only on each side of the improved road. Seven applications to provide the service areas were made to the local planning authority, one being from the respondent, E, and two from RDL. Both parties appealed.
E requested that all appeals should be heard at a single inquiry. The reply was that there did not appear to be sufficient justification to delay the other appeals which were proceeding by written representations. Thereafter, the inspector issued his decision letter on RDL’s written representations’ appeal granting permission for both their service areas. E appealed to the High Court on the ground that the competing site was a relevant consideration and that it should have been taken into account and, further, that it was not open to the decision-maker to use administrative inconvenience to avoid taking that consideration into account. The applicant’s appeal was allowed: see [1993] EGCS 94. The Secretary of State appealed.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. The Secretary of State argued, inter alia, that the inspector did not have to consider rival applications and the relative merits of other sites in the absence of a conclusion that there would be adverse impact or significant adverse effects from the planning proposal. However, although there was a clear public advantage in that a service area was deemed necessary, the sole ground common to refusal of planning permission by the local planning authority to all seven applications had been that they would constitute an undesirable intrusion in the landscape.
2. It sufficed for the purpose of deciding the present appeal to look at the principles enunciated in Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council v Secretary of State for the Environment (1990) 61 P&CR 343, where it was stated that the “decision maker had to take into account a matter which might cause him to reach a different conclusion to that which he would reach if he did not take it into account” and where it was “clear that there is a real possibility that the consideration of the matter would have made a difference to the decision …”. In the present case, there was no dispute as to the existence of an alternative site which might have had a lesser adverse effect. Moreover, it was a case where only one planning permission could have been granted. Thus, there were not only alternative sites which were the subject-matter of planning applications, they were at the material time also the subject of appeals. They therefore constituted a material consideration, account of which might have led to a different decision.
Christopher Katkowski (instructed by Howard Pollok & Webb, of Norwich) appeared for E; John Hobson (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for the Environment; the second and third respondents did not appear and were not represented.
