Respondents granting developer outline planning permission – Whether description of proposed development insufficient to comply with environmental statement requirements – Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1998 Schedule 3 para 2(a) – Application dismissed
In May 1999, upon an application for judicial review brought by Milne (the applicant) and others, the court quashed two outline planning permissions granted by the respondent council to William Bowden Properties Ltd (WB) and English Partnerships (EP) for a proposed business park developmen: see R v Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council, ex parte Tew (1999) 3 PLR 74. The court found that the “bare” outline applications failed to comply with the Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1988 Schedule 3 para 2(a), which implemented EC Directive 85/337/EEC. It was further held that the respondents had been wrong in concluding that the applications satisfied policy EC/6(d) in the unitary development plan.
Following the court’s decision, WB and EP amended their applications, added a third application and submitted a new environmental statement in relation to the whole project. In December 1999 the respondents, through their environment control subcommittee, granted the three outline permissions subject to certain conditions. The applicant sought to quash that decision on the grounds that, first, the description of proposed development contained in the applications was still insufficient to comply with the requirements of Schedule 3 para 2(a). It was submitted that an outline planning application was incompatible with para 2(a) as a matter of principle, and that the existence of reserved matters meant that the outline procedure itself was not in line with the requirements or objectives of Directive 85/337. Second, the applicant contended that policy EC/6(d) had to be strictly applied and that, if its criteria were not met, the development did not accord with the UDP.
Held: The application was dismissed.
1. It was not contrary to the directive’s objectives to integrate environmental assessment into domestic legislation for outline permission, even though such legislation acknowledged some degree of flexibility for some projects. The directive sought to ensure that as much knowledge was available to the decision maker as could reasonably be obtained, given the nature of the project. It was not intended to frustrate projects that required a degree of flexibility. On a sensible interpretation of para 2(a) of the 1998 assessment regulations, the requirement to provide information about the “site and design and scale of the development” could be satisfied without providing every piece of information about those matters. The level of information required to satisfy para 2(a) had to be sufficient to enable the likely significant effects to be assessed. The applicant’s contention that an application could not be made for outline permission for a development that required an environmental statement was ill-founded.
2. It would be difficult to find any project of any significance that was wholly in accord with the relevant development plan. For the purposes of section 54A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, it was enough that the proposal accorded with the UDP when considered as a whole. It did not have to accord with each and every policy within it. Policy EC/6(d) was a most relevant, but not the only relevant, policy in the UDP.
John Howell QC (instructed by Patwa Solicitors, of Birmingham) appeared for the applicant; Timothy Straker QC (instructed by the solicitor to Rochdale Borough Council) appeared for the first respondents; Brian Ash QC (instructed by Everesheds) appeared for the second respondent developers.
Sarah Addenbrooke, barrister
