Article 31 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2010 obliges a local planning authority (“LPA”) to provide certain information on giving notice of the determination of a planning application by them. Where planning permission is granted, the notice must include a “summary of their reasons” for the grant and a “summary of the policies and proposals in the development plan” that are relevant to the decision to grant permission. Further obligations apply where the permission is granted subject to conditions.
In R (on the application of Coleman) v London Borough of Barnet [2012] EWHC 3725 (Admin) one of the grounds of an unsuccessful challenge to the decision of the LPA to grant planning permission for the redevelopment of a former garden centre site as a school was failure on the part of the LPA to give adequate reasons for their decision. (It was contended that the reasons given did not explain how the LPA had addressed the main issues.) The court rejected that ground in reliance upon earlier authorities, from which the following principles can be extracted.
(1) The requirement to provide a summary of the reasons for granting planning permission differs from the requirement under Article 31 “to state clearly and precisely their full reasons” for a refusal of planning permission. (2) What is required is a summary of the reasons for the grant, not a summary of the reasons for rejecting what has been said by objectors. (3) The adequacy of reasons will depend on the circumstances of each case with the officer’s report being a relevant consideration. (4) If the report recommended refusal and the planning committee resolves to grant planning permission, a fuller summary of reasons would be appropriate. (5) However, if the planning committee followed the officer’s recommendation, a shorter summary may well suffice. (6) The summary of reasons should not require the reader to refer to background material such as the officer’s report. (7) It is insufficient to identify a policy without indicating what it concerns. (8) What is required is a summary of the relevant polices, not merely a list. (9) However, that summary need be no more than a few words.
In cases involving an environmental impact assessment, additional and more onerous obligations are imposed on a LPA by regulation 24 of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 2011.
John Martin
