Councillor fails in High Court challenge over permission for poultry farm

A Herefordshire councillor has lost a High Court battle over planning permission for a poultry farm to construct buildings for 82,500 chickens.

Green party councillor Felicity Norman objected to the grant to GT Williams near Bush Bank.

Herefordshire refused the application but Mr Williams successfully appealed.

Justine Thornton QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, said Ms Norman’s objections to the inspector’s appeal decision centred on environmental issues, “in particular the inspector's assessment of predicted odour and noise impacts and his reliance on an environmental permit already granted by the Environment Agency”.

She brought seven grounds of challenge but Mr Williams in turn challenged whether Ms Norman was a 'person aggrieved' within the meaning of section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

Her challenges were that the inspector's reasoning was inadequate and misunderstood the location of the doors of the proposed poultry units and thus the noise evidence.

Ms Norman also claimed the inspector misunderstood the implications of the odour impact measurements, failed to engage with aspects of the technical data and did not lawfully assess the environmental impacts,

But giving judgment in Norman v Secretary of State for Housing Communities and Local Government & Ors [2018] EWHC 2910 Ms Thornton said only the points about noise and odour were arguable and in any event were not made out.

She said: “An inspector's decision letter should not be laboriously dissected in an effort to find fault.

“Decisions are to be read benevolently and on the basis that they are written principally for parties who know what the issues between them are and what evidence and argument has been deployed on these issues.

“The court must be astute to ensure that challenges are not used as a cloak for a rerun of the arguments on the planning merits. An adverse inference that a decision maker misunderstood something will not readily be drawn and should only be drawn where all other known facts and circumstances point overwhelmingly to a different conclusion.”

Courts should be wary of approaching documents on technical issues like noise and odour legalistically, the judge said.

She also held that since Ms Norman lived 10 miles from the site concerned she lacked standing.

“Whilst the claimant may feel aggrieved about the inspector's decision, that does not make her a person aggrieved under the 1990 Act,” Ms Thornton concluded.