A campaigner’s challenge to planning permission for 65 houses on a green field site in Exminster has been rejected by the Court of Appeal.
Sales LJ upheld a 2013 high court ruling in which Patterson J dismissed Dianne Smyth’s case, in which she claimed the Bellway Homes development would harm an important nearby bird habitat at Exminster Marshes.
The judge upheld the planning permission for the agricultural site at Sentrys Farm, Exminster, Exeter.
Smyth – chair of Get Involved Exminster – had argued that the development site was too close to the Exe Estuary Special Protection Area (SPA) for birds, and that Exminster Marshes, which forms part of the SPA, is only 350m from the Sentrys Farm site. The SPA also incorporates the Dawlish Warren Special Area of Conservation (SAC).
She claimed that the inspector’s decision to grant planning permission in June 2012 was unlawful, but the high court judge found that Teignbridge district council, which had refused permission, had carried out an appropriate assessment and concluded that there would be no likely significant environmental effects provided mitigation measures were in place.
Backing her decision, Sales LJ said that the planning inspector had been entitled to conclude that the proposed development, even when combined with other development, would not be likely to give rise to any significant effects on either the SPA or the SAC.
He said: “There was no possibility of irreversible harmful effects on the SPA and the SAC arising from implementation of the development on the site at once, and there was sufficient scope to ensure that appropriate preventing safeguarding measures would be implemented before any major residential developments gave rise to possible in-combination effects.”
Smyth v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Court of Appeal (Richards, Kitchin and Sales LJJ) 5 March 2015
Gregory Jones QC and David Graham (instructed by Leigh Day Solicitors) for the appellant
James Maurici QC (instructed by The Treasury Solicitor) for the respondent
Rhodri Price Lewis QC (instructed by Ashfords LLP) for the interested parties
