Where land is being acquired compulsorily, it will often be in the interest of the landowner to apply to the local planning authority (LPA) for a certificate of appropriate alternative development (CAAD) under section 17 of the Land Compensation Act 1961. (This course is also open to the acquiring authority.) Since planning permission for development other than that to be carried out by the acquiring authority will not be granted, this is one way of establishing, for the purpose of compensation for the land, what development might have been permitted in the absence of a compulsory purchase order.
The LPA is bound, on receipt of an application, to issue either a negative or a positive certificate. The latter will state the class or classes of development for which planning permission would have been granted and conditions may be added. There is a right of appeal to the secretary of state, under section 18 of the 1961 Act, and a means, under section 21, of challenging the secretary of state’s decision in the High Court on grounds similar to those set out in section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. What the landowner must not ignore is the fact that the LPA and the secretary of state’s inspector are bound to treat the application for a CAAD as though it were an application for planning permission.
In Rooff Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2010] EWHC 1784 (Admin); [2010] PLSCS 202, the landowner, whose land was within an area of industrial and commercial development, adjoined a freight railway and was close to a route proposed for the realignment of a major road, sought to challenge the decision of an inspector to uphold a CAAD that was confined to Class B1 and Class B2 uses. It argued that it should also have extended to Class C3 use. (The inspector had concluded, in particular, that the situation of the site sufficiently militated against residential redevelopment.)
The court dismissed the landowner’s claim. The judge held that the inspector’s decision, when read as whole, did not indicate that he had misunderstood the contents of the relevant planning guidance or the nature of his duty in applying it to the site. The question of what weight should be accorded to the development plan and supplementary materials was a matter for the inspector, subject to the court’s supervision on ordinary judicial review principles. The inspector had been entitled to reach the conclusion that he had and had given adequate reasons.
John Martin is a freelance writer