Welsh council defeats legal challenge from residents over sewage pumping station decision

A residents association has lost a High Court case over whether Cardiff Council properly agreed to allow a sewage pumping station to be built to serve a new housing development.

In The Llandaff North Residents' Association, R (On the Application Of) v Cardiff Council [2023] EWHC 1731 (Admin)HHJ Jarman KC. sitting as a judge of the High Court, rejected all the points argued by Llandaff North Residents' Association.

Cardiff in 2016 allocated land for a mixed-use development with a minimum of 5,000 homes, now named Plasdŵr.

Wales’s water provider Dŵr Cymru in November 2021 submitted an application to build a pumping station to serve the proposed development, about 1km away.

At the same time, Cardiff granted an application by the developer to discharge a planning condition after a hydraulic modelling assessment was obtained.

The residents association challenged both planning permission for the pumping station and the condition’s discharge.

It advanced four grounds of challenge on the issue of planning consent. These were that Cardiff wrongly took into account that the pumping station will serve other developments in the area; failed to consider an integral part of Dŵr Cymru's proposal was a scheme to increase capacity for foul sewerage, so and requiring an environmental statement; that the officer's report failed to set out crucial details of the impact of construction works and that it ignored impacts on nearby rugby pitches.

In its objections to the discharge of the condition requiring the hydraulic assessment, the residents association argued Cardiff did not take into account that a further assessment should be made due to changes in the proposal, that it failed to consider both the need for an environmental statement to include the main reasons for the option chosen and the environmental effects of various offsite works.

HHJ Jarman rejected all the grounds argued on both points. He said: “In my judgment…the fact that the pumping station is needed for the Plasdŵr development does not mean that it will not also serve other existing and potential developments in the area, and the officer and the authority were entitled to have regard to those matters. The high threshold of irrationality in this approach has not been surmounted.”

He said there was no obligation on the officer or the authority to work through multiple options for surface water disposal and nor was further detail needed on the local impact of construction work. He also noted the local rugby club did not object to any impact on the pitches and held Cardiff had no need to go further into loss of open space.

Turning to the discharge of the condition on the hydraulic assessment, HHJ Jarman said: “The crucial [point], in my judgment, is that it was Dŵr Cymru who requested [the] condition to be imposed.

“It is clear from the reason given for the condition that its purpose was to attempt to address…overloading the network.”

He said the fact that the solution ultimately identified was not one of the notional solutions canvassed in the assessment “does not mean that the masterplan was not informed by the [assessment].

The judge added: “In my judgment it was not irrational for the authority to discharge [the] condition in these circumstances and there was nothing materially misleading about the officer's report.”

He rejected the remaining two grounds for similar reasons, that conditions had been met and the officer’s report has set these out correctly.

Mark Smulian