Parish fails to derail grant of planning permission for waste recovery centre

A High Court judge has refused to quash the grant by a county council of planning permission for an energy from waste plant and related to development.

In Marton-Cum-Grafton Parish Council), R (On the Application Of) v North Yorkshire County Council [2013] EWHC 2406 (Admin) the parish council sought a judicial review over North Yorkshire County Council’s decision in relation to the proposed Allerton Park Recovery Centre.

The claimant advanced a number of grounds for its challenge. These were that:

1. The resolution to grant consent was made by North Yorkshire on 30 October 2012. There subsequently arose new facts which amounted to material considerations and which deprived the officer of jurisdiction to issue the consent and required him to return the matter to the committee in accordance with the principle in R (Kides) v South Cambridgeshire DC. Unlawfully, and in breach of the principle in Kides, the officer of North Yorkshire purported to issue the planning permission on 14 February 2013;
2. The form of the application was in conflict with the EIA Directive and the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2011;
3. The content of the Environmental Statement was in conflict with the EIA Directive and EIA Regulations in that the county council wrongly excluded vital information from the statement despite it being provided by the IP to supplement information already contained in the statement;
4. The content of the Environmental Statement was in conflict with the EIA Directive and EIA Regulations in that it wrongly excluded information about the likely significant effects of the proposal which ought to have been included in the Environmental Statement, namely; the impact of the Combined Heat and Power ("CHP") pipes on the environment;


5. Alternatively to 4 above, North Yorkshire failed to take into account a material consideration in assessing the acceptability of the Environmental Statement as a condition of granting consent; namely the analysis of the Secretary of State of a failure to provide environmental information about the likely significant effects of laying CHP pipes in a similar proposal at Cheshire.

His Honour Judge Gosnell in the Leeds Registry of the Administrative Court rejected the claim. He considered grounds 2 and 3 to be unarguable and refused permission in relation to both grounds.

The judge gave permission for grounds 1, 4 and 5 but dismissed them.

Cllr Gareth Dadd, executive member for highways and planning services at North Yorkshire, said: "I am pleased that the planning process has been vindicated by the judge and that he has ruled that the Planning and Regulatory Functions Committee was right to grant planning permission for the development.

"The technologies included in the AWRP development will enable us to move away from landfilling our waste to a sustainable long term solution which generates green electricity".