Local plan put on deposit – Applicant’s land not allocated for residential development – Applicant objecting – Inspector recommending site be allocated for development – Council not accepting inspector’s recommendation – Whether council failed properly to consider inspector’s reasoning and findings – High Court refusing application for relevant parts of local plan to be quashed
The applicant was the owner of land covering 1.1 ha at Bampton Road, Aston (“the site”), which was capable of accommodating approximately 30 dwellings. In October 1993 the West Oxfordshire local plan was put on deposit. In February 1994 the applicant objected to the local plan contending that the site should have been allocated for residential development. The council’s officers prepared a report dealing with, inter alia, the applicant’s objections and concluded that the site was part of a very important open space contributing to the rural character of Aston, and that its development would be contrary to the restraint and environmental policies and policy RUR3 of the Oxfordshire Structure Plan and recommended that the site was not to be allocated for housing. An inspector was appointed to hold an inquiry. The inspector concluded that the site would lend itself to new housing, which would help to fulfil a strategic function, provided that it did not extend over the whole of the site . The council’s officers considered the inspector’s recommendation and concluded that allocating the land for development would be inconsistent with policies EN8 and RUR3 of the structure plan and policy BE3 of the local plan, which sought to resist the loss of valuable areas of open space within settlements which contributed to their character, and accordingly recommended that the inspector’s recommendation should not be accepted. In December 1996 the council issued a consultation document which set out their provisional reasons for not accepting the inspector’s recommendations in relation to the site, and on November 7 1997 the local plan was formally adopted. The applicant applied under section 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1980 for the local plan to be quashed, contending that the council had failed to engage the inspector’s reasoning and findings, but had simply adhered to the line they adopted before the inquiry.
Held The application was dismissed.
1.The question was always whether an inspector had raised a particular issue which the council must address if they were not to be condemned as having arrived at a decision without dealing with matters reasonably relevant to the decision’s merits, or without giving proper reasons for putting an inspector’s conclusion to one side.
2. There was no factual dispute of any substance between the council and the inspector. The council had attached more importance to the need to preserve the site as an area of open space than to the very limited contribution which their allocation for housing might make. The council had disagreed with the inspector upon that issue, which was a matter of planning judgment, and which accordingly they had been entitled to do. The inspector’s report and recommendation had not raised any matters which required further investigation or more specific reasoning by the council if they were to depart from the inspector’s view. Accordingly, there was no need for any greater degree of elucidation by the council; Millerv Wycombe District Council [1997] JPL 951, applied; Stirk v Bridgnorth District Council (1997) 73 PCR 439, distinguished.
Meyric Lewis (instructed by Winckworth & Pemberton, of Oxford) appeared for the applicant. John Steel QC and Karen Steyn (instructed by the solicitor to West Oxfordshire District Council) appeared for the first respondents; the second respondent, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, did not appear and was not represented.
