Gypsies – Stationing of caravans – Temporary planning permission – Application for planning permission for residential caravans on site in area of outstanding natural beauty – Inspector refusing permission and rejecting possibility of three-year temporary permission considered acceptable by local planning authority – Whether obliged to consider temporary permission for different period – Whether reasonable expectation of new sites becoming available at end of such period – Claim dismissed
The second defendant council was the local planning authority for an area of which 80% was designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). In 2007, the claimant gypsy applied for planning permission in respect of agricultural land, seeking a change of use of one corner of the land to permit the stationing of a mobile home for him, his wife and their four children. Permission was refused. The claimant appealed to the first defendant secretary of state; an inspector heard the appeal in 2008.
The inspector considered that the development would harm AONB and contravene relevant planning policies. After considering the personal circumstance of the claimant and his family and the general need for gypsy site provision, he concluded that planning permission should be refused. Applying the government guidance on gypsy sites in Circular 01/2006, he considered a grant of temporary permission, but rejected that possibility. In doing so, he differed from the view of the second defendants that it would be reasonable to grant a temporary permission for three years to cover the period up to 2011, when the second defendants expected to adopt a development plan document that would provide for gypsy and traveller site allocations. The inspector indicated that he was not confident that the process would be completed by 2011 or that sites would become available for occupation by that date. Consequently, he dismissed the claimant’s appeal.
The claimant brought proceedings, under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, to quash the inspector’s decision. He contended that the inspector, having concluded that a three-year temporary permission was not reasonable, should have considered whether gypsy sites were likely to become available within some other period of time, so as to justify the grant of a temporary permission for that period.
Held: The claim was dismissed.
Under para 45 of Circular 01/2006, consideration had to to be given to granting a temporary permission only where: (i) the need for sites for gypsies and travellers in the area concerned was unmet; (ii) gypsy and travellers sites were not available in that area; and (iii) new sites were likely to become available at the end of a particular period. The inspector had rejected a three-year temporary permission on the ground that sites might not become available at the end of that period, and his reasoning indicated that it was impossible to anticipate when other sites would become available. That conclusion had been open to him. Since he had been unable to fix any period within which it could reasonably be expectation that new sites would become available, condition (iii) had not been met and the obligation to consider granting a temporary permission to the claimant had not been triggered. Moreover, even if the condition had been met, he would have been no obliged to grant temporary permission but only to consider granting it. The inspector’s other findings as to the harmful effect upon the AONB and the incompatibility with planning policies on landscape quality provided powerful arguments against such a grant in the instant case. The inspector had been entitled to reach the conclusions that he had reached as a matter of planning judgment and he had given adequate and justifiable reasons for his decision.
Marc Willers (instructed by Community Law Partnership, of Birmingham) appeared for the claimant; Philip Coppel (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first defendant; the second defendants did not appear and were not represented.
Sally Dobson, barrister
