The London Borough of Tower Hamlets today had planning permission for a 62-flat council development quashed because of a “misleading” Daylight & Sunlight report.
However, lawyers for Rainbird challenged the planning permission, saying that a Daylight & Sunlight (D&S) report on the project didn’t get posted on the council’s website, which meant that vital information wasn’t made publicly available.
However, Tower Hamlets, argued that the document was posted online during the relevant period.
In a ruling today, John Howell QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, said that it was “undoubtedly surprising” that many residents had accessed the council’s website but hadn’t seen the D&S report.
But he said that “in this case the onus lies on the claimant to show at least on the balance of probabilities that the S&D Report was not listed on the council’s website in the relevant period”.
“Although I am troubled by the number of residents who have said that they did not see it listed, in some cases even though they accessed the relevant page on a number of occasions, the claimant has not persuaded me that it is most likely that the council’s systems inexplicably failed than that the document was not inadvertently overlooked among the long list of over 90 documents by those visiting the website.”
However, in his judgment, he said the report itself contained a number of flaws relating the the number of habitable rooms that would suffer deterioration in sunlight and the nature of that deterioration.
He ruled that the report, and an update to it, “were materially misleading with respect to the impact of the proposed development on the sunlight and daylight enjoyed by the dwellings in Tomlins Grove”.
“The decision to grant planning permission was unlawful and the planning permission granted by the council will be quashed,” he concluded.
Melanie Rainbird v The London Borough of Tower Hamlets
Planning Court (John Howell QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge) 28 March 2018
