Orme & Anor v North Yorkshire County Council & Anor

For environmental impact assessment development, the relevant decision under regulation 3(2) is the written grant of planning permission, rather than the committee’s earlier resolution. A post-decision duty to publish the main reasons for permission concerns public information, not the validity of the decision-making process. Its breach may therefore be cured by a mandatory order requiring publication of the decision-makers’ actual reasons.

A councillor with a prejudicial interest must withdraw from the meeting room even when not a member of the committee. A councillor cannot avoid that requirement by claiming to attend in a private capacity. Whether an interest is prejudicial primarily falls to the councillor, subject to the objective standard imposed by the code and review for irrationality.

The appellants challenged a county council’s grant of planning permission for an extension to a sand and gravel quarry. Richards J substantially dismissed their judicial review claim but ordered the council to publish a substitute decision notice containing its main reasons.

The appeal raised two groups of issues. The first concerned compliance with regulations 3(2) and 21(1) of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999. The second concerned whether a councillor who lived near the proposed quarry was properly excluded from the planning committee meeting under the mandatory Model Code of Conduct, although he was not a member of that committee and wished to speak for his constituents or as a private citizen.

1. Appeal dismissed unanimously. Simon Brown LJ delivered the judgment, with which Keene and Scott Baker LJJ agreed.

2. The relevant “decision” under regulation 3(2) of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 was the written notice granting planning permission. The planning committee’s earlier resolution was not itself the development permission. The notice’s statement that the council had considered the accompanying environmental information sufficiently used the statutory terminology and complied with regulation 3(2). Even if that requirement had been breached, Richards J was entitled to conclude that quashing was unwarranted.

3. The council had breached regulation 21(1) by failing to make available a sufficiently specific statement of its main reasons. That provision operates after permission has been granted. It informs the public what was decided and why, rather than prescribing the decision-making process. The breach did not therefore require the permission to be quashed and could be remedied by a mandatory order requiring publication of the actual reasons.

4. Later reasons must be approached cautiously, especially after litigation has begun. On the evidence, however, the committee members had accepted the officer’s report while placing particular weight on different considerations. The proposed substitute notice and attached report provided a satisfactory statement of their reasons. This conclusion was compatible with Berkeley v Secretary of State for the Environment [2001] 2 AC 603, which concerned failure to undertake the required environmental assessment rather than a remediable post-decision disclosure failure.

5. Paragraph 12 of the Model Code applied to every member of the authority, not merely members of the committee conducting the meeting. A councillor with a prejudicial interest could exert influence despite not being a committee member. The restriction rationally protected public trust and confidence in local decision-making.

6. A councillor attending a council meeting could not shed his official capacity merely by declaring that he attended privately. Permitting that course would defeat paragraph 12. The appellant’s home was among the few properties closest to the proposed quarry, so an informed member of the public would reasonably regard his interest as sufficiently significant to be likely to prejudice his judgment of the public interest. His exclusion was lawful.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The appeal was dismissed unanimously. The court affirmed the substantive dismissal of the judicial review challenge and the use of a mandatory order to remedy the breach of regulation 21(1).

2. High Court, Queen’s Bench Division (Administrative Court): Richards J substantially dismissed the claim. He held that regulation 3(2) had been satisfied, that the regulation 21(1) breach could be cured by publication of a substitute notice, and that the councillor’s exclusion under the Code was lawful. No citation is stated in the judgment.