In Oadby and Wigston Borough Council v (1) Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and (2) Bloor Homes Ltd [2016] EWCA Civ 1040, the Court of Appeal has given permission for a 150 homes development to be built on green fields. The decision comes after nearly two years of legal wrangling, after Oadby and Wigston Council challenged a planning inquiry which overturned its decision to reject the scheme. The council was overruled in the High Court and took the case to the Appeal Court, where it was again defeated in July.
The proposed development will include up to 150 new homes, allotments and outdoor sports pitches on a 7.3 hectare site. Some 45 of the homes will be provided as low-cost housing.
The scheme was approved in February 2015 by a government planning inspector, after Bloor Homes appealed Oadby and Wigston Borough Council’s decision to refuse permission for the site at Cottage Farm in Glen Road. The council had rejected the scheme because the land had not been earmarked for new housing in the council’s Local Plan to 2026.
The inspector concluded the council’s refusal had been based on out-of-date housing requirements, and said Bloor’s proposals represented a sustainable development which would make a significant contribution to meeting the housing need in the area. The council’s challenge was dismissed in the High Court in a judgement by Justice Hickinbottom in July 2015. Rejecting the council’s appeal, Lindblom LJ said: “Hickinbottom J upheld the inspector’s approach and conclusions as lawful, and in my view he was clearly right to do so.”
The central issue in the appeal was whether the judge erred in holding that the inspector had neither misinterpreted nor unlawfully applied government policy in the relevant passages of the NPPF, in particular paragraphs 47, 49, 157, 158 and 159.
The Court of Appeal began by stating the appeal raised no novel or controversial issues of law. It went on to dismiss the appeal and rejected the arguments put forward by the council. The judgment cites case law in which similar cases have been brought, and concludes that the council’s core strategy had not been prepared in accordance with the requirements of NPPF policy, and was not a reliable basis for decision-making. In these circumstances, as the inspector also recognised, it was up to him, as decision-maker in the appeal, to evaluate for himself the full, unconstrained requirement for housing against which to test the council’s ability to “demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites” under the policy in paragraph 49 of the NPPF. The Court of Appeal concluded that the inspector did this “in a legally impeccable way”.
Martha Grekos is a partner and head of planning at Howard Kennedy LLP
