The future housing plans of three local authorities have been backed by the High Court.
Jay J ruled that a challenge brought by a parish council to the joint core strategies for Nottingham city council and neighbouring authorities Broxtowe borough council and Gedling borough council must be dismissed.
Calverton parish council had claimed that the plans for the Nottingham area will increase the number of homes in its village by a third, at the expense of green belt land, and hoped to persuade the judge to quash the development plan document adopted last September by the three authorities.
It expressed concerns over the housing target in Greater Nottingham – Broxtowe borough, Gedling borough and Nottingham city – aligned core strategies (ACS) as well as its authorisation of a future review of the green belt in order to accommodate the proposed level of housing growth.
The parish council claimed there had been a failure on the part of an inspector who reviewed the plan to consider whether housing numbers should be reduced to prevent release of green belt land, a failure to apply national policy in respect of such release and a failure to comply with the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004 (the SEA Regulations).
However, the judge today rejected all its grounds of challenge.
He said that, in deciding whether the “exceptional circumstances” test for reviewing green belt boundaries in paragraph 83 of the NPPF was met, the inspector should first assess objectively assessed need, then move on to the planning judgments involved in the ascertainment of exceptional circumstances in the context of national policy.
In doing so, he said, the inspector “should at least ideally, identify and then grapple with the following matters: (i) the acuteness/intensity of the objectively assessed need (matters of degree may be important); (ii) the inherent constraints on supply/availability of land prima facie suitable for sustainable development; (iii) (on the facts of this case) the consequent difficulties in achieving sustainable development without impinging on the green belt; (iv) the nature and extent of the harm to this green belt (or those parts of it which would be lost if the boundaries were reviewed); and (v) the extent to which the consequent impacts on the purposes of the green belt may be ameliorated or reduced to the lowest reasonably practicable extent”.
Though he said that this “ideal approach” had not been explicitly followed on a systematic basis in the instant case, it is a “counsel of perfection”. He continued: “Planning inspectors do not write court judgments. The issue which properly arises is whether the inspector’s more discursive and open-textured approach, which was clearly carried through into the ACS, was legally sufficient.
“It is clear from (i) the formulation of the main issues; (ii) the frequent references in the inspector’s report to the need to protect the green belt; and (ii) the several references to ‘exceptional circumstances’, that the inspector had in mind the broad contours and content of paragraph 83 of the NPPF.”
He added that the inspector had taken an approach that was “both sensible and appropriate” and that the authorities had properly considered possible alternatives that would not involve reviewing the area’s green belt boundaries.
Calverton is a village of 3,000 homes which the judge described as an “enclave in the green belt”, but the parish council claimed that, under the ACS, it will be expanded by up to 1,055 new houses in the period up to 2028.
Calverton Parish Council v Nottingham City Council and ors Planning Court (Jay J) 21 April 2015
Richard Turney (instructed by Public Access) for the claimant
Morag Ellis QC and Annabel Graham-Paul (instructed by Nottingham, Broxtowe and Gedling Borough Councils) for the defendants
Richard Honey (instructed by Walker Morris, Leeds) for the interested partie
