Claimant’s business premises located in countryside — Application for planning permission to construct additional parking refused — Whether inspector erred in taking into account presence of trees that were not subject to a preservation order — Claim dismissed
The claimant’s business premises were located in a rural and relatively isolated setting. Although there was some parking on the site, the claimant maintained that it was insufficient for its needs and applied for permission to develop an adjoining field to provide additional parking spaces. Permission was refused by an inspector on the grounds that: (i) the application provided for more parking spaces than the floor area warranted under the provisions of the local plan or PPG 13; (ii) the construction would be detrimental to the visual amenity of the area, in particular a nearby stand of trees; and (iii) there were some public transport links available. The claimant appealed this decision on numerous detailed grounds, including advancing the argument that as the trees were not protected by preservation orders they could be felled, and it was therefore unreasonable for the inspector to take their presence into account.
Held: The claim was dismissed.
There was no substance to any of the criticisms advanced by the claimant in its pedantic and wholly artificial reading of the inspector’s letter. The inspector had set out and clearly addressed the main issues in the case. She was entitled to find on the evidence that the claimant’s application would have resulted in a surplus of parking, which would have been detrimental to the area in terms of visual amenity. Trees were a vital component of visual amenity and where they formed significant parts of the landscape they were protected under planning policies regardless of whether they had preservation orders.
This case was another example of a legalistic and nit-picking approach to a decision letter that was perfectly plain on the merits. The claimant should have stood back and considered the sense of the decision letter as a whole and asked whether there was something odd about the decision. When, as in this case, the answer was clearly “no”, then the claimant should have thought long and hard about mounting a challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
Martin Edwards (instructed by Ralph & Co, of Newquay) appeared for the claimant; James Strachan (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first defendant; the second defendants, Carrick District Council, did not appear and were not represented.
Vivienne Lane, barrister
