Claimant planning authority refusing to grant second respondent retrospective planning permission for rebuilding dwelling – Second respondent appealing – Inspector finding new building falling within exception to inappropriateness of such construction within green belt – PPG 2 para 3.4 – Whether inspector misunderstanding PPG 2 – Application dismissed
The second respondent rebuilt a coach house for use as a dwelling and applied to Runnymede Borough Council (the claimant) for retrospective planning permission. The claimants refused permission and served two enforcement notices. The second respondent appealed against both the enforcement notices and the claimants’ refusal to grant permission.
In respect of the planning appeal, the inspector, in his decision letter of 5 May 1999, referred to PPG 2, which provided at para 3.4 that: “the construction of new buildings inside a green belt is inappropriate unless it is for the following purposes: limited extension, alteration or replacement of existing dwellings (subject to para 3.6)”. Para 3.6 stated, inter alia: “provided that it does not result in disproportionate additions over and above the size of the original building, the extension or alteration of dwellings is not inappropriate in the green belt”. The inspector concluded that: “the new dwelling occupies no greater area than the existing building” and that it complied with the requirements in para 3.6 of PPG 2. The inspector was satisfied that the rebuilding of the coach house was a replacement of an existing building as a matter of fact. In reaching that decision, he relied upon the fact that: (i) until 1991, there had been nearly 30 years of independent residential use; (ii) there was no abandonment of that use; and (iii) post 1991, there had been an element of residential occupation, albeit of a nature ancillary to the main building. In allowing the planning appeal, the inspector concluded that: “In view of these circumstances it would be inequitable to insist that, because the original building was not beyond any doubt an independent dwelling at the time the works commenced, the exception in PPG 2 should therefore not apply”.
The claimants sought to challenge the inspector’s decision pursuant to section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, principally on the ground that the inspector had misunderstood PPG 2. They submitted that proper application of the policy was not subject to considerations of whether the result would be inequitable, and, furthermore, that the inspector had misconstrued the meaning of the words “existing dwelling”.
Held: The application was refused.
The question of whether or not the coach house was an “existing dwelling” within PPG 2 was a question of fact and degree for the inspector. He looked at all the circumstances, weighed them up and concluded that it was an “existing dwelling”. His approach was one that the words in PPG 2 entitled him to take. The use by the inspector of the word “inequitable” did not constitute a flaw and his approach could not be said to be irrational: Virgin Cinema Properties Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment [1998] 2 PLR 24 considered.
Michael Druce (instructed by the solicitor for Runnymede Borough Council) appeared for the applicants; Timothy Mould (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first respondent; Richard Ground (instructed by Lovegrove & Eliot) appeared for the second respondent.
Sarah Addenbrooke, barrister
