Younger Homes (Northern) Ltd v First Secretary of State & Anor

A screening opinion for Schedule 2 development is a matter of planning judgment. It need only be based on sufficient information to decide whether significant environmental effects are likely; it need not resolve every uncertainty or replicate an environmental statement. An outline application is not automatically incapable of being screened. Relevant remedial measures and standard conditions may be considered where the circumstances justify doing so.

An officer may formulate a screening opinion as the authorised officer’s agent without a formal signature or express notation. Procedural failures concerning notification or public registration do not themselves place a planning permission outside statutory powers, particularly where substantial prejudice is absent. An antecedent unlawful screening opinion may nevertheless be challenged when the final permission is challenged.

The claimant acquired part of a site intended for a predominantly retail and leisure development. The development was Schedule 2 development under the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999. Calderdale Metropolitan District Council’s planning officer concluded that it was not likely to have significant environmental effects and that an environmental impact assessment was unnecessary.

The Secretary of State called in the application, declined to reopen the inquiry and granted planning permission. The claimant challenged the permission under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, alleging that the screening opinion was unauthorised, substantively inadequate and procedurally defective, and that the Secretary of State should have made his own screening direction.

1. The application was dismissed. The Secretary of State’s costs and Calderdale’s costs were awarded on detailed assessment. Permission to appeal was refused.
2. The screening opinion was validly made. Although the planning officer was not the officer named in the council’s formal delegation and the document was unsigned, the evidence established that senior planning officers exercised the delegated powers in the authorised officer’s name and with his authority. No formal signature or express statement of agency was required.
3. The officer’s consideration of traffic, contamination and the outline nature of the application was legally sufficient. Screening is a practical planning judgment. The decision-maker must have sufficient information to assess likelihood and significance, but need not resolve all uncertainties or undertake a comprehensive environmental assessment. The outline form of an application does not itself prevent screening. Indicative drawings, the officer’s experience, reserved-matters controls and straightforward remedial measures could be considered on the facts.
4. The officer had impermissibly reasoned that an environmental statement was unnecessary because a traffic impact assessment would provide information. That error did not invalidate the decision because he also reached an independent and lawful conclusion that traffic effects were unlikely to be significant. The two reasons were not legally inseparable.
5. The failure to send the screening opinion to the applicant under regulation 5(5), and to place it on the planning register under regulation 20, did not make the permission an act outside the Secretary of State’s powers under section 288(1)(b)(i). If treated as failures to comply with relevant requirements under section 288(1)(b)(ii), the claimant had to show substantial prejudice. It had suffered none.
6. Obiter, an antecedent screening opinion so substantively defective that it could have been quashed on judicial review would not qualify as a screening opinion for regulation 8. A claimant may challenge the final permission under section 288 on grounds arising from an earlier reviewable step, even though that step was not separately challenged.

First-instance judicial review-style statutory challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The application was dismissed and permission to appeal was refused.