| SPOTLIGHT |
Housebuilder CALA Homes has successfully challenged the government’s abolition of regional spatial strategies in the High Court.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles told councils in May that they need no longer pay heed to the strategies – which had set out housebuilding targets for each area – pending the government’s intended abolition of the system.
Pickles intends to bring in a Localism Bill this month which will set out a new process by which councils will receive a financial incentive for allowing whatever volume of development they see fit.
He has now had to tell councils to temporarily follow the strategies once more.
But CALA argued that the suspension of the strategies had left a policy gap in which there were no criteria against which development proposals could be judged.
It went to court over a 2,000 homes project in Winchester, which was rejected in July after the strategies were revoked.
Law firm Macfarlanes, which acted for CALA, said Mr Justice Sales’ judgement “emphatically supports the two grounds advanced by our client, namely that [he] acted outside his statutory powers in circumventing the need for parliamentary scrutiny of such a fundamental change to the national planning system and failed to consider the likely environmental effects of revoking regional strategies”.
The Home Builders Federation’s planning director Andrew Whitaker said: “Everyone involved in the delivery of housing has been struggling with the policy vacuum caused by the revocation of regional strategies.
“Today’s judgment allows the government to put in place a clear transition to get from the old system to the proposed localism based one. This will avoid throwing away the many years of planning for future housing delivery in which many people, including local communities, have invested their time and money.”
Pickles responded: “Whilst respecting the court’s decision this ruling changes very little. Later this month, the coalition government will be introducing the Localism Bill to Parliament, which will sweep away the last government’s controversial regional strategies.”
He said chief planner Steve Quartermain had today written to all local planning authorities and the Planning Inspectorate “confirming that they should have regard to this material consideration [revocation of the strategies] in any decisions they are currently taking”.
Mark Smulian
