Council defeats Planning Court challenge over bus stop advertising
The London Borough of Croydon has won a case brought by a local resident in a dispute over an illuminated bus stop.
A Mr Whiteside challenged Croydon in the High Court over its consent for advertising in a new bus shelter outside his home.
It had formerly displayed back-illuminated, double-sided poster advertising but was to have installed two-sided digitally illuminated advertising.
Croydon argued there was no basis to the three grounds advanced: failure to consider the local development plan; failure to conduct specific assessment of the impact for this specific site; and failure to consult Mr Whiteside and other neighbours.
The claimant contended that there were broader implications of the judgment than for just this one bus stop.
Croydon's advertising contractor Valo Smart City UK proposed the installation of digital liquid crystal displays at 110 bus shelters, and at 42 dual sided, freestanding rectangular poster advertisements and six large freestanding columns. The previous advertising was paper based.
Planning committee members were told planning permission was not needed because of permitted development rights in Schedule 2, Part 12, Class A (b) of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, but advertising consent was needed.
Giving judgment in Whiteside, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough Of Croydon [2023] EWHC 1806 (Admin), Sir Ross Cranston, sitting as a High Court judge, said it was “horn book law that planning officers' reports to committee are not to be read with undue rigour, but with reasonable benevolence”.
He added: “A benevolent reading of the report is that this constitutes instead descriptive material and background information about the advantages of the new digital advertising. There is no reference to this material when the officer sums up…and the argument about immaterial considerations goes nowhere.”
The officer’s report had dealt with the level of illumination appropriate in a suburban and the council used best practice to determine as a matter of planning judgment the degree of illumination which it would approve outside Mr Whiteside’s home, Sir Ross said.
On consultation, he said: “In my view there has been no clear, unambiguous, and unqualified undertaking that the council will consult leading to a legitimate expectation that it would occur in this case.”
Sir Ross dismissed the case and ordered Mr Whiteside to pay Croydon’s costs.
Mark Smulian
