Environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth has failed in a legal bid to have the UK’s National Planning Policy Framework overturned.
The NPPF is one of the UK’s main planning policy documents and was first published in 2012. The document put years of planning policy in one place and introduced scores of planning reforms.
Friends of the Earth argues that the government’s revised NPPF, published last year, is in breach of EU law because it hadn’t gone through a “strategic environmental assessment”.
Specifically, they argue that the NPPF falls within the SEA Directive’s definition of a “plan or programme”.
The case was heard over two days in December before planning judge Mr Justice Dove.
Giving his ruling today, Dove J rejected Friends of the Earth’s case.
In a ruling that contained around 30 pages of citations from EU and UK case law, he ruled that the NPPF was more of a framework of policies than a plan, and therefore was not subject to the provisions of the SEA Directive.
“The fact that the framework is a material consideration in the planning system does not assist the claimant,” he said in his ruling.
“It is plain from the evidence which the claimant has produced that the policies of the framework are material considerations, and sometimes important material considerations, in the determination of planning applications. However, the role the framework plays does not give rise to any legislative or administrative provision regulating its production. In the absence of the framework, the remaining development plan policies and material considerations would have to be evaluated in order to resolve the equation of whether or not planning permissions should be granted.
“In short, therefore, there are no specific statutory or administrative provisions which govern or regulate the procedure for preparing or adopting national planning policy in the form of the framework,” he said.
“I am satisfied that the claimant’s case is arguable, but ultimately I am not convinced of its substantive merits. For the reasons given, the claimant’s application must be dismissed.”
Friends of the Earth Ltd v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
QBD (Dove J) 6 March 2019
Richard Kimblin QC and Nina Pindham (instructed by Will Rundle, head of legal, Friends of the Earth) for the claimant
Rupert Warren QC and Heather Sargent (instructed by the Government Legal Department) for the defendant
