A Court of Appeal ruling in favour Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery – the iconic brewer and champion of the green belt based outside Tadcaster, North Yorkshire – is to come under challenge by the local authority at the Supreme Court.
Lady Hale, Lord Carnwath and Lady Arden have granted North Yorkshire County Council permission to appeal its defeat in a planning battle over a local quarry earmarked for a major development in the green belt.
The case examines the circumstances in which mineral extraction can take place in the green belt.
Last March, the Court of Appeal quashed the planning permission granted by the council to Darrington Quarries, ruling that its planning officer erred when she recommended the development wouldn’t have a visual impact on the green belt. They said that it was for the planning authority to come to its own conclusion on that issue.
Darrington, which has been quarrying in the area since 1948, planned to extend its 25ha site a further 6ha, and expected to extract about 2m tonnes of crushed rock over a period of seven years.
According to paragraph 90 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), mineral extraction in the green belt is “not inappropriate” as long as it “preserve[s] the openness of the green belt and do[es] not conflict with the purposes of including land in the green belt.”
However, according to the judgment, the planning officer that recommended approval of the plan to the planning authority stated that “screening could protect the environment and residential receptors from potential landscape and visual impacts”.
She therefore concluded that the development “doesn’t conflict with the aims of the green belt”.
The Court of Appeal ruled this was an error, stating that she should instead have told the planning committee that they could take the visual impact of the planned new quarry into account when exercising their planning judgment.
The date for the Supreme Court to hear the appeal has not yet been set.
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