Council for National Parks Ltd. v The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority

In a public-interest judicial review, the court may depart from the usual order that costs follow the event where the claimant has no private interest, limited resources, and the challenge concerns an issue of public importance. A participating interested party will ordinarily receive a second set of costs only where it has a sufficiently separate interest and promotes separate arguments. An unsuccessful application for permission to appeal must be refused where the proposed ground has no real prospect of success. A planning authority is not invariably obliged to follow a development-plan policy where the relevant legal framework permits departure.

The claimant challenged a planning decision concerning the Bluestone development and lost its application. This judgment dealt with consequential costs and the claimant’s application for permission to appeal.

The court considered whether the claimant should pay the defendant authority’s costs despite the public-interest character of the challenge, whether the developers were entitled to a separate award of costs, and whether the proposed appeal concerning economic benefit, policy GE4 and section 54A had a real prospect of success.

1. Costs of the defendant. Although the claimant had lost, the court accepted that the challenge concerned a matter of public importance and that the claimant had limited resources, appropriate objects and reasons for bringing the proceedings. The defendant’s limited resources were given no real weight because no financial information had been provided. The usual order was therefore displaced, and there was no order that the claimant pay the defendant’s costs.
2. Costs of the developers. The question was governed by the guidance in Bolton M.D.C. v Secretary of State [1995] 1 W.L.R. 1176. The developers had an important investment to defend, but they had not shown a sufficiently separate interest from that of the planning authority. Their answers to the claimant’s arguments did not differ from those advanced by the authority. Applying the reasoning in R (Bedford & Clare) v London Borough of Islington and Arsenal Football Club (2002) EWHC 2044, they could participate but had to bear their own costs.
3. The decision in Mount Cook Ltd. v Westminster City Council [2004] 2 P & C R 22, concerning refusal of permission for judicial review, was not applicable to this costs question. Since no order was made for the authority’s costs, there was also a strong argument against ordering payment of the developers’ costs.
4. Permission to appeal. The proposed appeal was confined to the contention that economic benefit to Pembrokeshire could not be a material consideration when deciding whether policy GE4 should not be applied, because GE4 required an overriding national need. The authority cited only the decision in the Smith case, part of Buckland [2004] J.P.L. 570. That decision concerned the Green Belt and was specifically related to it. The court held that the proposed appeal had no real prospect of success. The authority was not obliged simply to follow the development plan, and permission to appeal was refused.