PP 2010/108

Moore v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2010] EWHC 1698 (Admin); [2010] PLSCS 195 concerned yet another third-party challenge to an inspector’s decision to grant planning permission on appeal, based (in part) on an apparent failure by the inspector to impose a specific condition. As with R (on the application of Smith) v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (see PP 2010/107), this limb of the challenge was unsuccessful because the decision letter was held to have described the permitted development in such a way as to obviate any need for the condition in question. In Moore, the developer had appealed to the secretary of state against the failure of the local planning authority to determine its application for full planning permission for a set of serviced leisure and visitor moorings along a 200m stretch of the River Brent. The moorings would intrude between 5m and 6m into the navigable waters. Following a public local inquiry, the inspector granted planning permission in the following terms:- “I… grant planning permission for fully serviced leisure and visitor moorings at River Brent Moorings, Ferry Quays, Brentford in accordance with the terms of the application ref 0112HE-P3 dated 26 November 2008 and the plans submitted with it subject to the conditions listed below in Schedules 1 and 3.” The claimant, who had been an objector at the inquiry, brought proceedings, under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, seeking to quash the inspector’s decision. His first ground of challenge was that the inspector had erred in law in failing to subject the planning permission to a condition restricting the extent to which the development could encroach into the navigational channel. The judge concluded that there was no need for such a condition. The planning application and its supporting plans had clearly been expressly incorporated by the inspector into the grant of permission. (The wording she had adopted met the requirements stated in R v Ashford Borough Council, ex parte Shepway District Council [1998] JPL 1073.) Had this not been the case, as the application was for full permission the plans would in any event have become part of the permission, following Barnett v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2009] EWCA Civ 476; [2010] 1 P&CR 8. Those plans defined the limits of the site that was the subject of the permission, and therefore made it unnecessary to impose a condition. John Martin is a freelance writer