Campaigners lose High Court challenge over redevelopment of former school

The High Court has thrown out a judicial review brought by a conservation group in Rottingdean over a plan for a redevelopment that includes listed buildings.

In Safe Rottingdean Ltd v Brighton And Hove City Council [2019] EWHC 2632 (Admin) Sir Duncan Ouseley, sitting as a High Court judge, declared: “It is impossible to see how any conclusion could have been reached that the application did not accord generally with the development plan”.

Campaign group Safe Rottingdean had brought the case against Brighton and Hove City Council over a grant of planning permission last February for a development of 93 houses at the site of the former St Aubyn's School.

The school closed in 2013 having occupied a site within the Rottingdean Conservation Area, although its adjacent 2.5 hectares of playing fields lie outside this. The main school building and adjoining chapel are Grade II listed buildings.

Planning committee members received a lengthy officer’s report and accepted its recommendation to grant permission on the basis that the benefits of the scheme outweighed harm.

Safe Rottingdean sought to challenge this on the grounds that the report significantly misled the planning committee because it failed to advise it that the application breached two policies of the city’s local plan, failed to tell the committee about National Planning Policy Framework provisions on heritage assets and failed to apply s38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which requires decisions to be made in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.

Sir Duncan said the officer’s report had properly weighed disadvantages and benefits from the application and “did not simply adopt the approach of saying that that harm ceased to be relevant because overall there were setting benefits”.

He said it was “an impossible contention” that the NPPF had been ignored, adding “the fallacy permeating all of his submissions is that the policies are only concerned with harm, and ignored benefits”.

Mark Smulian