Planning permission – Waste disposal transfer station – Established use certificate – Environment agency waste management licence with enclosure condition – Planning permission for enclosure refused – Whether inspector having made proper comparison between fall-back proposal and appeal proposal – Application to quash inspector’s decision dismissed
The applicant operated a long-standing haulage business with operations in the waste industry from the appeal site, an area 32m x 32m, at 228 Crow Lane, Romford. The business involved the transfer of certain classes of waste which, some years after the grant of an established use certificate for a waste transfer disposal station on the site, required a licence under the Environment Protection Act 1990. The application for planning permission necessary to comply with the condition upon which the licence was granted, namely the complete cover and enclosure of three sides of the waste transfer operation, was refused by the second respondents, the council. The applicant appealed under both section 43(1) of the Environment Protection Act with regard to the condition and against the refusal of planning permission. At the subsequent inquiry it was agreed that the enclosure would reduce the environmental impact of the existing operation. The applicant argued that, if the present waste transfer activities could not continue, the applicant had two “fall-back” possibilities. The land, consistent with existing permissions, could lawfully be used entirely for a transport yard and to accommodate further heavy goods vehicles. Alternatively it could be used for storing and handling types of waste not requiring a licence. By her decision letter of December 9 1996 the inspector dismissed both appeals. The applicant appealed from the refusal of planning permission contending that, inter alia, the inspector had failed to make findings as to whether fall-back use would be carried on, or alternatively, if the inspector had made such a finding, she had made no comparison between the planning implications of the fall-back uses and the planning implications of the proposed development.
Held The application was dismissed.
The court would resist the tendency for minutiae to detract from the broad, simple terms of section 70(2) of the 1990 Act under which the decision maker had to regard all material considerations of the fall-back propositions. The inspector had dealt with the two alternative uses which might be undertaken and found that the prospect of fall-back use was actual and not merely theoretical: see Brentwood Borough Council v Secretary of State for the Environment (1996) 72 P&CR 61. She had made the requisite comparison between the fall-back proposals and the proposed development and had considered the continuation of commercial use attracting significant numbers of heavy goods vehicles to the site as being likely to prevent development for housing. The effect of those conclusions, given the background facts of the case, was a comparison between the proposed development and the fall-back uses, the former being more prejudicial than the latter to the planning of the area for the reason that the proposed building would undesirably consolidate the inherently unsuitable use.
Charles George QC (instructed by Kenneth Elliott & Rowe) appeared for the applicant; David Elvin (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for the Environment; the second respondents, Havering London Borough Council, did not appear and were not represented.
