Jackson, R (on the application of) v First Secretary of State & Anor

In a statutory challenge to a planning inspector’s decision, the court will not require separate reasons for every point raised by an applicant. The inspector must address the principal issues, but may treat a peripheral suggestion as insufficiently material to require express consideration. An inspector may give limited weight to claimed temporary harm where the proposed permanent development remains uncertain. The decision-maker is entitled to determine the proposal actually before him and reject its site on visual-impact grounds, even where the applicant relies on an analysis of alternative sites.

The claimant challenged, under Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 288, an inspector’s dismissal of his appeal against refusal of permission for a caravan for temporary residential use at a trout farm.

Earlier, another inspector had accepted a functional and financial need for a permanent fishery worker’s dwelling but rejected its proposed siting because of harm to the character of the area. The claimant argued that the later inspector had failed to consider proposed screening, misunderstood the duration of the caravan’s need, and failed to consider that there was no alternative site.

1. The application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was dismissed. The claimant was ordered to pay the first defendant’s costs, summarily assessed at £4,576.
2. The claimant’s suggestion that feather-edge boarding might mitigate the caravan’s appearance was peripheral and ambiguously expressed. It appeared in a lengthy written response, was not advanced as a proposed planning condition, and was inconsistent with the earlier description of the proposal as requiring no construction work. The inspector was therefore not required to deal with it as one of the principal issues.
3. The inspector fairly understood the case advanced by the claimant as one involving a caravan required for about 12 months while a permanent dwelling was under construction. The claimant had not corrected that understanding when responding to the planning authority’s request for further information. In any event, if the caravan were needed for longer, that would strengthen rather than weaken the visual-impact objection.
4. The inspector was entitled to give limited weight to the claimed temporary nature of the harm because permission for the permanent dwelling was uncertain. He was also entitled to consider the merits of the caravan site actually proposed and to conclude that it caused unacceptable harm to the character and appearance of the Area of Special Landscape Quality.
5. The inspector had taken account of the claimant’s analysis of alternative locations but was entitled to state that he could decide only the proposal before him. The wider analysis was principally relevant to the separate appeal concerning the permanent dwelling.

The claimant had previously applied for permission for a permanent fishery worker’s dwelling. A first inspector dismissed that appeal after accepting the functional and financial need but finding the proposed siting visually harmful. The present application challenged a later inspector’s decision dismissing the appeal concerning the temporary caravan.