We have already seen (PP 2010/33) that where a local planning authority (LPA) issues a screening opinion for the purposes of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment)(
In R (on the application of Co-operative Group Ltd) v Northumberland County Council [2010] EWHC 373 (Admin), the developer had applied for planning permission for a mixed retail and residential development. Its consultants wrote to the LPA, requesting a screening opinion pursuant to regulation 5 of the regulations. The LPA’s opinion concluded that the proposed development was not an environmental impact assessment development. It subsequently granted planning permission.
(It was common ground that the development fell within Schedule 2 to the Regulations, being an urban development project the area of which exceeded 0.5ha, but the LPA decided that it would be unlikely to have significant effects on the environment by virtue of factors such as its nature, size or location.)
The claimant sought judicial review, contending that the LPA had had insufficient information to reach that conclusion. More specifically, the only information that had been available to it was contained in the consultants’ letter, which failed to set out the minimum information necessary before a negative screening opinion could be issued. Accordingly, the LPA had acted irrationally. The developer argued that the letter was comprehensive and professionally prepared.
The court allowed the claim, and quashed the decision to grant planning permission. The judge stated that the consultants’ letter: (i) failed to describe possible environmental effects other than in the most general and superficial of terms; (ii) appeared to proceed on the basis that significant information as to the environmental effects of the development would be provided in future; and (iii) seemed to contemplate, at least impliedly, that prospective remedial measures were available to address all possible effects without identifying what those measures were.
He also stated that the development proposals were an evolving concept and that their evolution had not been completed and understood when the screening opinion was issued. The LPA did not have available, nor was it supplied with, sufficient information to enable it to issue a negative screening opinion when it did.
John Martin is a freelance writer
