Application for planning permission – Permission refused against advice of planning officer – Before date fixed for appeal planning committee holding site inspection – Permission granted – Whether reasons required to be given for granting permission when earlier identicial application refused – Application for judicial review refused – Appeal dismissed
Following an application for planning permission to Aylesbury Vale District Council dated September 26 1994, for the erection of two houses at Barracks Farm, Nash, Buckinghamshire, the planning officer reported that the proposal would not involve an extension of the built development of the village into open countryside and therefore it would comply with the relevant policy of the rural areas local plan, RH 6. The council refused to grant permission on January 5 1995 stating, inter alia, that the proposal would constitute development of a site lying outside the built-up area of the village. On March 22 1995 the applicant for permission, P, appealed to the Secretary of State for the Environment under section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and a public inquiry was proposed. Before the inquiry could take place the planning department submitted a further report to the planning subcommittee to suggest that, in view of the fact that permission had been refused against their officer’s advice, a site inspection should take place. Such an inspection was made, and as a result the subcommittee resolved to invite P to submit an application for planning permission on a without prejudice basis.
On August 1 1995, P made a further, identical, application for planning permission. The subcommittee met again, following which permission was granted on September 5 1995. No reasons were given for the decision or for the fact that the earlier decision had been reversed. Both decisions were made by a majority. The applicants sought orders to quash the planning permission granted. Under the statutory framework there was no statutory right for a person aggrieved by a grant of planning permission to appeal against the grant, and no equivalent statutory duty upon the planning authority to give reasons for such a grant. The judge refused the application and the applicants appealed contending, inter alia, that the proposed development was outside the built up area of the village and would harm the character of the area, and that the council was under a duty to give reasons for the grant of permission when an identical application had been refused earlier.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. There was no general duty in the existing statutory context to give reasons for the grant of planning permission, in contrast to the obligation upon a planning inspector to make a statement of reasons for a decision he was empowered to make following a planning appeal. That obligation was not to be extended by analogy to cover the situation where no duty was imposed by statute.
2. There was a good and obvious reason for the second decision and no obligation to spell it out arose by reason of the previous refusal. The majority of the subcommittee had come to the conclusion that the site was within the built up area of the village.
3. The subcommittee was not obliged, in the interests of objectors, to permit the first application to go to appeal.
Rabinder Singh and Karen Steyn (instructed by Kingsford Stacey) appeared for the appellants; Nathalie Lieven (instructed by the solicitor to Aylesbury Vale District Council) appeared for the first respondents; the second respondents, the Secretary of State for the Environment, did not appear and was not represented.
