Town and Country Planning Act 1971–Application to quash grant of planning permission–Caravan Site Act 1968–Proposed gipsy caravan site–Complaint of lack of consultation–No obligation to carry out formal consultations–Application dismissed
In these
proceedings Arthur Mansfield, on behalf of the Redmires Road Association,
applied for an order of certiorari to move into the High Court, for the purpose
of its being quashed, a decision of Sheffield City Council of June 1976,
granting planning permission for the development of a site at Redmires Road as
a gipsy caravan site.
Raymond Sears
QC and Christopher Cochrane (instructed by Iliffe & Edwards, agents for
Clegg & Sons, of Sheffield) appeared for the applicant; Frank
Blennerhassett QC and P Hamlin (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard & Co, agents
for Roger Pensam, Sheffield City Council Legal Department) represented the
respondents.
Giving
judgment LORD WIDGERY CJ said that the ground of the applicant’s claim was that
the respondents, in granting planning consent for the development of a site in
Redmires Road as a gipsy caravan site, failed to have regard to ‘all other
material considerations’ as required by section 29 of the Town and Country
Planning Act 1971.
The origin of
the case was the Caravan Sites Act 1968, which laid upon local authorities a
duty to provide sites for ‘itinerant caravan dwellers’–in other words gipsies.
The applicant was a ratepayer of Sheffield, which appeared to have got off the
mark quickly as regarded the provision of a gipsy caravan site. In 1968 a
number of sites was under consideration. There was consultation with all
concerned, including the gipsies, and planning consent was eventually given for
one site but was quashed, on an appeal, by the appropriate Secretary of State
and the whole weary business of finding a different site had to start again. It
was in those circumstances that the respondents, in 1976, granted planning
consent for the Redmires Road site.
The first
question for the court was whether the applicant had any standing at all to ask
the court for an order of certiorari to quash the grant of planning permission.
Assuming he had, the central issue was whether it had been shown that the
respondents, in granting planning permission, had failed to give effect to any
proper planning considerations as required by section 29(1) of the 1971 Act.
The applicant’s contention was that the respondents had failed to consult the
gipsies before the grant of the 1976 permission and it did not avail the
respondents to say that they had consulted the gipsies prior to the 1968 grant
of planning consent, and so further consultation was necessary. Failure to
consult the gipsies further, claimed the applicant, was a failure to give
proper consideration to a relevant matter.
He (his
Lordship) was satisfied that the decision could be the subject of certiorari: R
v Hendon RDC, ex parte Chorley [1933] 2 KB 696 per Lord Hewart CJ.
Because of the view he had reached on the case he would not decide the precise
position of the applicant.
It was now
well established that local community views on any particular subject were
communicated to the local authority and he thought that during the last 10
years there had been full discussion about the present case. If the applicant
were right in his claim the doors might be opened to a demand for wide-ranging
formal consultations, but he had sought to restrict his claim to cases
concerning ‘small and highly independent’ bodies of people. While consultations
in the form of meetings would take place in a well-organised community, that
was quite different from saying that the law required such consultations.
Although there had been no formal consultations before the 1976 planning
decision with the gipsies, there had been a full interchange of views in the
years since 1968 and that was sufficient. There was no obligation on the
respondents to have had formal consultations of the kind claimed. The
application should be dismissed.
O’CONNOR and
LLOYD JJ agreed.
The
applications were dismissed with costs.
