Parish council persuades High Court to quash planning permission for 210 homes

The High Court has quashed permission for 210 homes in Suffolk after objections from a parish council that planning committee members had been misled.

Timothy Mould QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, ruled in favour of Thurston Parish Council in its case against Mid Suffolk District Council.

In Thurston Parish Council v Mid Suffolk District Council [2022] EWHC 352 (Admin) he found that Mid Suffolk’s planning committee had been given misleading advice by officers about the application by developer Bloor Homes and land owner Sir George Agnew, both of whom were interested parties.

Mid Suffolk gave outline planning permission for the development in December 2020.

Thurston said the planning referrals committee was given misleading advice about the weight that should be given to the relevant policies of the Thurston Neighbourhood Plan 2018-36.

The parish council said that misleading advice was founded on an erroneous interpretation of the Thurston Spatial Strategy [Policy 1] in the neighbourhood plan and a failure to recognise that the development was not in accordance with that policy.

It said this amounted to an error of law which meant Mid Suffolk failed to discharge its duty under section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

Thurston argued the committee was also misled into believing this was a case in which the presumption in favour of sustainable development applied under paragraph 11(d) of the National Planning Policy Framework (2019) because the development plan policies which were most important for determining the planning application were out-of-date.

It said this advice was erroneous, since the spatial strategy policy of the neighbourhood plan was the key relevant development plan policy and was up-to-date.

There was also misleading advice on paragraph 14 of the NPPF and the application of the tilted balance in a case in which granting planning permission for a housing development would be in conflict with the neighbourhood plan, it said.

Mr Mould said the planning officer’s report to the committee wrongly concluded the application should be permitted.

He said: “On the correct interpretation of Policy 1 and of the underlying spatial strategy and objectives of the neighbourhood plan, the release of the site for the development is not in accordance with the neighbourhood plan.

“On the contrary, development of the site for general housing is properly to be seen as being in conflict with the principal, relevant policy of the neighbourhood plan."

He said the committee had been “misled both by the advice that it received in the report and the oral advice of planning officers.

“The committee was advised that the neighbourhood plan was not to be understood as treating the defined settlement boundary as a barrier to housing development on a site which lay outside that boundary.”

That had been “a misinterpretation of Policy 1 of the plan. Contrary to the submissions advanced on behalf of both the defendant and the interested party, that advice is not vindicated by consideration of the plan as a whole, its context, strategy and objectives.

“On the contrary, consideration of those matters only serves to reinforce the terms of Policy 1 itself, that there is, and is intended to be, no policy support for general housing development on land outside the defined settlement boundary.”

He said advice from planning officers that there was a tension between the neighbourhood plan and the emerging draft local plan “was confusing and begged the question whether the development was properly to be seen as in accordance with the neighbourhood plan”.

Mr Mould also found that the planning officer's analysis of the position in relation to paragraph 14(b) of the NPPF “was vitiated by his misunderstanding of Policy 1 and the underlying strategy and objectives of the neighbourhood plan”.

He concluded: “I am in no doubt that the consequence of my conclusions…I should grant this application for judicial review.

“The planning permission must be quashed and the planning application for the development reconsidered by the defendant, on the basis of the correct interpretation of Policy 1 of the neighbourhood plan and that the release of the site for general housing development is not in accordance either with that policy or with the underlying spatial strategy and objectives of that plan.”

Mark Smulian