Harrogate Borough Council has escaped having its Local Plan quashed after falling foul of Strategic Environmental Assessment rules.
Local landowner Flaxby Park, which owns potential development land on the former Flaxby Golf Course in Harrogate, sued the council in the High Court claiming that it didn’t do a properly compliant SEA review when it identified the villages of Cattal and Green Hammerton as an appropriate area to build a new settlement.
The SEA rules have given rise to much complicated litigation. Most notably, Friends of the Earth lost a case it brought against the UK government arguing that the National Planning Policy Framework was non-compliant.
The directive is intended to ensure a high level of environmental protection in the planning system and stipulates circumstances in which a special report into the environmental impact of a development should be produced.
At a two-day hearing last month lawyers for the claimants argued that there was a failure to address certain parts of the SEA process when the Local Plan was drawn up, and the correct person or body hadn’t considered the different locations in the report.
And, in a long and complicated ruling handed down today, trial judge Mr Justice Holgate rejected most of the arguments but agreed that the council failed to comply with one aspect of the rules relating to an early stage of the local plan.
“The court has a discretion as to what remedy should be granted,” he said in his ruling.
In this situation “it would not be appropriate for the court to quash the Local Plan… A quashing order, even in relation to part of the plan would result in [the council] having to repeat the whole of the Local Plan process in relation to any part of the plan which is quashed. That would be wholly unjustifiable”.
Therefore he said that the council should take actons “limiting and rectifying the legal error”.
Flaxby Park Limited v Harrogate Borough Council and (1) Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (2) Oakgate Yorkshire Limited (3) CEG Land Promotions III (UK) Limited
Planning Court (Holgate J) 25 November 2020
Christopher Katkowski QC & Richard Moules (instructed by Town Legal LLP) for the Claimant
Paul Brown QC (instructed by Harrogate Borough Council) for the Defendant Christopher Young QC & James Corbet Burcher (instructed by Walker Morris LLP) for the 2nd Interested Party
James Strachan QC (instructed by Walton & Co) for the 3rd Interested Party
The 1st Interested Party did not appear and was not represented
