Town and country planning – Planning permission – Officer’s report – Claimant applying for judicial review of defendants’ decision to grant planning permission and listed building consent for conversion of barns to residential dwellings – Whether officer’s reports misleading – Application granted
The claimant was the owner and occupier of Wingfield Castle in Suffolk, a Grade I listed building of special architectural and historic interest. Just beyond the castle’s moat were a number of Grade II listed barns forming part of Castle Farm which had been sold into separate ownership during the twentieth century and was now owned by the interested parties. In December 2015, the interested parties applied for planning permission and listed building consent to demolish four modern agricultural buildings, part of the castle shed and elements of barns and to convert the barns into three dwellings. The applications were accompanied by a design & access/heritage statement by the applicant’s architects which explained that the conversion of the buildings was proposed to provide a sustainable way of preserving the fabric and ensuring the longevity of the structures.
Historic England recommended refusal of the application if the justification required by the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was not made for the harm the proposed development would cause to the significance of the barns and the castle. The claimant raised objections stating that he intended to reinstate and use the barns if he could. He pointed out that the applicants had withdrawn from selling the barns to him at a very late stage when final contracts were being prepared for exchange and stated that the existing condition of the barns had been brought about by the owners’ neglect. He also provided a report from an historic building consultant. The claimant was given a brief opportunity to address the defendants’ planning committee but, having considered the planning officer’s reports, they authorised the grant of consent subject to conditions.
The claimant applied for judicial review of that decision contending, among other things, that the committee had been misled by the omission of a number of critical items from the officer’s reports that concerned the impact which the proposed development would have on the setting of the castle and the claimant’s offer to restore the barns.
Held: The application was granted.
(1) Part of a planning officer’s expert function in reporting to a committee was to make an assessment of how much information to include in the report to avoid burdening the committee with excessive and unnecessary detail. There was no requirement for a report to contain an elaborate citation of underlying background materials. Nonetheless, it had to be clear and full enough to enable committee members to understand the issues and make up their minds within the limits that the law allowed. A report which failed to provide members with information without which no reasonable authority could determine the relevant application might invalidate the committee’s decision if left uncorrected. In such a case they might be insufficiently informed to make the decision lawfully. A report which would otherwise be so defective as to invalidate a decision on which it was based was not saved by the fact that members might have corrected any deficiency by themselves inspecting any document referred to them in the absence of evidence either that they did do so or that any deficiency was not left uncorrected: Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery (Tadcaster) v Selby District Council (CA 18 April 1997) [1997] PLSCS 105, R v Mendip District Council, ex parte Fabre (2000) 80 P & CR 500; [2000] PLSCS 6, Morge v Hampshire County Council [2011] UKSC 2, R (on the application of Maxwell) v Wiltshire Council [2011] EWHC 1840 (Admin); [2011] PLSCS 187, R (on the application of Lee Valley Regional Park Authority) v Epping Forest District Council [2016] EWCA Civ 404; [2016] PLSCS 120, R (on the application of Lensbury) v Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council [2016] EWCA Civ 824; [2016] PLSCS 230 and Palmer v Herefordshire District Council [2016] EWCA Civ 1061; [2016] PLSCS 296 considered.
(2) In the present case, the impression given by the report on the planning application was that little or no weight should be given to the prospect of the claimant doing anything to preserve the barns when considering the justification for their conversion to residential use as, notwithstanding the fact that he had been offered the barns to purchase on a number of occasions, there had been no commitment by him to do so hitherto. The reports were misleading in that they did not state that the last offer to purchase the barns that had allegedly been made to the claimant was in 2006 and the claimant had had no opportunity to accept any such offer in the previous 10 years.
(3) The difficulty with treating residential use as a viable use of the barns for the purpose of paragraph 131 of the NPPF, or as being consistent with their preservation for the purpose of section 66(1) of the Planning (listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, was that the reports did not find that the change of use would cause no harm to the listed barns. They apparently accepted that there would be harm caused to them by the conversion, albeit that the harm caused would be less than substantial and accordingly required clear and convincing justification. If the claimant acquired and repaired the barns, they would form part of the Castle Estate. Whether future owners of the castle would continue to maintain the barns as well as the castle, as part of that estate, would be a matter for the planning committee to consider. The court was not prepared simply to assume that, had the committee had considered the matter, it was highly likely that they would have concluded that it was unlikely that the barns would be maintained and that that in itself provided a clear and convincing justification for permitting the proposed conversion now.
(4) In all the circumstances, it did not appear likely (for the purpose of section 31(2A) of the Senior Courts Act 1981) that the outcome for the claimant would not have been substantially different had the reports not been significantly misleading. Accordingly, the claim for judicial review succeeded on the basis of the significantly misleading nature of the reports dealing with the history of the claimant’s efforts to acquire the barns and put them into good repair.
Richard Turney (instructed by Richard Buxton Solicitors, of Cambridge) appeared for the claimant; Giles Atkinson (instructed by Babergh Mid Suffolk Legal) appeared for the defendants; the interested parties did not appear and were not represented.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
Click here to read transcript: Lyndon-Stanford v Mid Suffolk District Council
