Fairfield Partnership v Huntingdonshire District Council & Ors

A local planning authority is not legally required to follow an inspector’s recommendation when adopting or altering a local plan. It must consider the recommendation and objections with an open mind and give proper, adequate and intelligible reasons. The required detail depends on the issue. Planning judgments allow broader latitude than factual disputes, and the court must not decide which legitimate planning consideration deserves greater weight. A local authority may depart from an inspector’s recommendation where it considers that there is a relevant planning reason for doing so. It need not establish that the inspector’s recommendation was objectively wrong or produce additional evidence.

The claimant challenged the adoption of an alteration to the Huntingdonshire Local Plan under section 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The alteration allocated land at Ermine Street for housing, following an inspector’s recommendation. The claimant had objected and proposed that alternative land at Cardinal Park should be allocated instead.

The claimant argued that the Council had wrongly treated the inspector’s recommendation as binding and had imposed too high a legal threshold before departing from it. The central issues were the legal standard governing departure from an inspector’s recommendation, the test actually applied by the Council, and whether any resulting error justified relief.

1. The claim was dismissed. The statutory discretions to quash the alteration did not arise because the Council had not erred in law.
2. Under regulations 28 and 29(6) of the Town and Country Planning (Development Plan) (England) Regulations 1999, the authority had to state its decisions on objections and its reasons. The purpose of reasons was to enable an objector to assess whether there were reasonable grounds for a statutory challenge. The reasons had to be proper, adequate and intelligible, but could be brief.
3. Where the issues involved planning judgment, the Council had broader latitude. The relevant inquiry included whether the objection had been fairly considered with an open mind, whether it had been understood, whether material considerations had been taken into account, and whether the reasons could rationally support the decision in the context of planning law and guidance. The court was not required to decide whether one legitimate planning consideration objectively outweighed another.
4. The inspector inquired and recommended, whereas the Council remained the decision-maker. Provided it adequately considered the inspector’s report and the objections, the Council retained a broad discretion as to whether and how to act on the recommendation. It could, in an appropriate case, repeat an earlier planning judgment, although doing so without further explanation might support an argument that it had not genuinely reconsidered the matter.
5. The officers’ advice had imposed too high a hurdle by suggesting that the Council should accept the inspector’s findings unless there were very good reasons, and that sufficient additional evidence was required. However, the evidence showed that the Council itself understood that it could depart from the recommendation for relevant planning reasons. It had therefore not improperly circumscribed its discretion.
6. Fairfield was sufficiently a person aggrieved for section 287 purposes because it had lodged an arguable objection which had allegedly been dealt with in error of law. That did not, however, establish the substantive challenge.

This was a first-instance claim under section 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The proceedings were commenced in the High Court on 22 January 2003. No lower-court decision is stated.