Development – Material consideration – Developer submitting planning application for phase 1 of development – Defendant authority granting permission subject to agreement to produce masterplan for wider development – Whether defendants failing to take account of relevant planning consideration – Whether defendants failing to take account of cumulative environmental effect of wider development – Application dismissed
The second interested party, a developer, applied for planning permission for phase 1 of a development. The proposed works were the first stage in a larger development, although the wider site had not been allocated for development in the relevant local plan.
The claimant objected to the development. He requested that a masterplan should be produced in respect of the entire development in order to assess its effect. The developer accepted the need for such a plan but maintained that since the proposed development was urgently required it was not possible to wait for a masterplan to be prepared before permission was obtained for phase 1.
An environmental statement had been prepared, under the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment)(England and Wales) Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/293), in respect of the effect of phase 1. A report by the planning officer recorded that phase 1 had social and economic benefits because it would create new jobs and this had to be weighed against the harmful effects of the proposed development.
The defendant authority granted permission subject to an agreement under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which provided that a master plan for the wider site should be submitted within 12 months.
The claimant challenged the grant of planning permission by way of judicial review contending, inter alia, that since phase 1 was not a stand-alone development, it was necessary to have a masterplan in order to assess the cumulative environmental effect of the first phase in the context of the wider development. Accordingly, the failure to produce a masterplan was a failure to take account of a relevant planning consideration and the likely significant environmental effects of the cumulative development.
Held: The application was dismissed.
The defendants were entitled to consider the planning application for phase 1 as a stand-alone development and to require a masterplan pursuant to a section 106 agreement to enable the cumulative effect to be assessed when further applications were made.
They had not erred in law in failing to insist upon a masterplan as a precondition to determining the planning application. The requirement to produce a masterplan subsequent to the grant of planning permission for phase 1 was a matter of planning judgment and could not be said to be unreasonable. It was capable of being a material consideration, but was not in itself necessary to the grant of planning permission.
When the application was submitted, no proposals were in place for the development of the wider site and no planning application had been made or consent obtained for the rest of the site or for the land allocated for further development. There was no duty to consider the cumulative effect of unknown future development since as no adequate information was available upon which a cumulative assessment could be made.
William Upton (instructed by Richard Buxton, of Cambridge) appeared for the claimant; David Elvin QC (instructed by David Yates, of Worksop) appeared for the defendant; David Forsdick (instructed by Farrer & Co) appeared for the second interested party; the first interested party did not appear and was not represented.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
