Stock & Ors v First Secretary of State & Anor

In construing an historic planning consent, the court must identify the permission granted by reading the consent together with any plan incorporated into it. A plan may show that permission was sought only for land marked for future development, excluding land marked as already sold or developed. Where an early consent is treated as equivalent to outline permission, the planning authority retains control over density and detailed matters, but must permit some residential development. Later permissions may exhaust the entitlement created by the earlier consent. The court may correct an inspector’s construction of a planning permission on a Town and Country Planning Act 1990 section 288 application.

The trustees sought to quash an inspector’s decision refusing lawful development certificates for a proposed dwelling at Bosham Hoe. The application followed two appeals under section 195 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, concerning a refusal and a failure to determine applications for certificates of lawfulness.

The central issues were whether the 1949 and 1953 consents covered the proposed site and, if so, whether the earlier consent authorised any further dwelling after the construction of Lamorna and Brackendene.

1. Application dismissed. The inspector’s decision refusing the certificates was upheld. The defendants were awarded their costs.
2. The 1953 consent incorporated its application plan. The plan marked the appeal site red, identifying plots already sold as sites for houses or where houses had already been built. It marked future building sites blue. The consent therefore did not grant permission over the red land. The inspector had construed the consent and plan, rather than created an impermissible convention of interpretation (paras 11–12).
3. The claim could therefore succeed only by reference to the 1949 consent. That consent covered only areas C, D and E, and excluded areas A and B. It was to be treated as equivalent to outline consent, although the planning authority retained control over density, design, materials and other detailed matters (paras 13–14).
4. The plan did not necessarily establish a single-house-per-plot limitation. The development pattern was not uniform, and the inspector’s stated reasoning did not inevitably follow from inspection of the plan (paras 15–18).
5. Nevertheless, the inspector reached the correct result for a different reason. The 1949 consent required the authority to permit some residential development but allowed it to control density through the equivalent of detailed permission. The two later permissions for Lamorna and Brackendene resulted in two houses being built within areas C, D and E and exhausted the entitlement under the 1949 consent. This was the only rational way to give effect to that consent (paras 19–20).
6. The court declined permission to appeal. The application to quash was dismissed.

The judgment itself records no earlier judicial decision in the same litigation. It was a first-instance application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 challenging an inspector’s decision.