CG Claydon Ltd, R (on the application of) v First Secretary Of State & Anor

A challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is confined to legal error or non-compliance with a relevant statutory requirement. An inspector’s decision letter must be read as a whole and need give sufficient, but not exhaustive, reasons for the principal important controversial issues. The court must not recast a disagreement about planning judgment as a legal challenge. Planning judgments are for the inspector unless irrationality is established. Where policy requires an alternative and appropriate area of open space, the inspector must assess whether the proposed replacement is appropriate in the particular locality, having regard to its characteristics and location.

The claimant challenged, under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the First Secretary of State’s dismissal of its section 78 appeal against the Council’s deemed refusal of outline planning permission for residential development and public open space. The Inspector considered the loss of former allotment land and open space, proposed replacement land, housing need, a duplicate application, and the site’s potential future value as open space. The claimant alleged inadequate reasons, reliance on insufficient evidence, failure to consider officers’ reports, and reliance on a lost opportunity. The central issue was whether any alleged defect amounted to an error of law or failure to comply with a relevant statutory requirement.

1. Claim dismissed. None of the four grounds established that the Inspector’s decision was outside the statutory powers or affected by a relevant procedural failure. The claimant was ordered to pay the First Secretary of State’s costs, summarily assessed at £4,090.
2. A decision letter must be read as a whole and not construed like a statute. The reasons duty requires sufficient detail to show the conclusions reached on the principal important controversial issues, but reasons may be brief. The court should avoid close textual scrutiny and should not treat every omission or elliptical statement as legal error.
3. Under section 288, conclusions involving planning judgment are not open to challenge in the High Court merely because another view is possible. A challenge based on perversity faces a particularly high threshold where the decision rests on expert assessment and site inspections.
4. The Inspector had correctly understood Local Plan policy OS1. The policy required an alternative and appropriate area of public open space within the same vicinity. The proposed sites were capable of being open space in general, but their location, topography and characteristics meant that they did not satisfy the policy in the circumstances. The Inspector’s reasoning was adequate.
5. The Inspector was entitled to rely on the Urban Capacity Study extract, the evidence of the Council’s Strategic Planning Manager and other inquiry material. He was not required to refer specifically to officers’ favourable reports on an undetermined duplicate application, since the relevant question was whether he had grappled with the principal issues in the section 78 appeal.
6. The Inspector could treat the site’s potential future improvement as a material consideration. A land-use decision may look to the long term, and tangible evidence that beneficial change will probably occur was unnecessary.

First-instance judicial review challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The judgment records no prior decision of another court.