A local planning authority has power under section 97 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to revoke or modify a planning permission, where it considers it expedient to do so. In the case of operational development, it may do this at any time before the operations are completed. (The revocation or modification will not affect any building or other operations carried out before the coming into force of the revocation or modification order.) When deciding whether to make an order, the authority is bound under section 97 to have regard to the development plan, and to “any other material considerations”.
If there are objections, the revocation or modification order is – under section 98 – subject to confirmation by the Secretary of State. Separately, the Secretary of State himself has power – under section 100 – to make a revocation or modification order. In either case, however, any person interested in the land will be entitled to claim compensation from the authority under section 107 of the Act.
In Health and Safety Executive v Wolverhampton City Council [2012] UKSC 34; [2012] PLSCS 172, the question agreed by counsel for the purposes of the appeal to the Supreme Court was this: “In considering under section 97…whether it appears to a local planning authority to be expedient to revoke or modify a permission to develop land, is it always open to that local planning authority to have regard to the compensation that it would or might have to pay under section 107”.
The dissenting view in the Court of Appeal below was that the likely amount of compensation payable was not capable of being a material consideration. The meaning of the term “material consideration” had to be consistent throughout the Act. It was settled law that financial considerations unrelated to the use and development of land were not material, for instance, to the grant or refusal of planning permission.
The Supreme Court answered the question in the affirmative. The word “expedient” was capable of encompassing the cost consequences of revocation. It implied that the action should be appropriate in all the circumstances. Where the exercise of the power would have both planning and financial consequences, there was no reason to treat either as irrelevant. Section 97 created a specific statutory power to buy back a planning permission previously granted. Cost or value for money was naturally relevant to that consideration.
John Martin