A long-running bid to force a local planning authority to obtain an environmental assessment at the reserved-matters stage has been dismissed by the Court of Appeal.
Local resident Diane Barker had argued that Bromley London Borough Council’s decision to approve a cinema development on the site of London’s former Crystal Palace was unlawful on the basis that an environmental assessment should have been carried out at the reserved-matters stage.
However, dismissing the appeal, Latham LJ said that the implementation of the directive by the Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1988 entitled the planning authority to consider the full environmental effects of the proposed development at the outline planning permission stage.
In those circumstances, he said, “there is no room for the directive to impose directly any requirement for an environmental assessment at the time of consideration of reserved matters”.
Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.
R (on the application of Barker) v Bromley London Borough Council Court of Appeal (Brooke and Latham LJJ and Burton J) 23 November 2001.
Robert McCracken and James Pereira (instructed by Richard Buxton, of Cambridge) appeared for the appellant; Timothy Straker QC and James Strachan (instructed by the solicitor to Bromley London Borough Council) appeared for the respondents.
PLS News 29/11/01
