Judge allows appeal over refusal of inspector to allow former quarry to be filled with inert waste before it is built over

The High Court has allowed an appeal against a planning inspector’s rejection of the expansion of a quarry over what Mr Justice Lane called an “entirely baffling” section of the inspector’s decision letter.

Holystone Civil Engineering had applied to Sunderland City Council to increase the amount of inert waste in the former quarry before a business park is built over it.

Sunderland rejected the application under section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to develop the land without complying with certain conditions subject to which a previous planning permission was granted.

Holystone appealed to the inspector, who confirmed the council’s decision.

The former quarry is in the Green Belt and after extraction ceased in the mid-1990s Sunderland granted planning permission to fill it with domestic and non-toxic waste.

That activity ceased when the council granted planning permission in October 2013 for redevelopment with a business park.

Holystone applied in 2019 to develop the land without complying with four 2013 conditions, with an increase in the amount of inert waste deposited and a further five years in which to do this, raising the land level by some 12 metres.

Sunderland’s planning officer recommended approval but the planning committee rejected this as inappropriate Green Belt development.

In Holystone Civil Engineering Ltd v Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities [2023] EWHC 1739 (Admin) Lane J said that evidence to the inspector about job creation from the additional landfilling was clear that this would safeguard 10 jobs and be likely to generate 15 to 25 additional direct jobs and 10 indirect jobs involving haulage but the inspector appeared to think this referred to the business park.

The judge said: “I agree with the claimant that the second and third sentences in paragraph 19 of the decision letter represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the claimant's evidence.

“It was plain that these jobs had nothing to do with the creation of the employment park. They were to do with the expansion in time and volume of the waste facility.”

This meant paragraph 19 of the letter “constitutes a significant error. We simply do not know what weight the inspector would have accorded this aspect of the claimant's case, had the error not occurred”.

Lane J said this was compounded by paragraph 20 of the letter, where “even if one takes the benign view that the inspector was aware of the 10 existing jobs, which would be safeguarded, and was comparing them against the new direct jobs, the increase was at least 150%. In no sense can such an increase be regarded as anything other than significant.

“Read together, paragraphs 19 and 20 are, with respect, entirely baffling.”

The judge explained: “The fact that the numbers of jobs are, in absolute terms, small, is nothing to the point. As was explained, ‘every existing job retained in what is an area of higher than average unemployment is important’.

“If, therefore, the inspector was thinking in absolute terms in saying what he did at paragraph 20, he failed to have regard to this relevant matter.”

A further ground failed, that the inspector mischaracterised the main issue when considering whether the proposed development was inappropriate development in the green belt.

Mark Smulian