Day v Brighton & Hove City Council East Sussex County Council

When a local planning authority rejects an inspector’s recommendations and leaves the plan substantially unchanged, a further inquiry will usually be unnecessary. The authority must consider whether the objections raise genuinely new issues, whether an inquiry would provide a material benefit, and whether its cost and delay are justified. Fairness to objectors remains important, but the relevant considerations need not appear as a formal checklist in an officer’s report. The court must assess the decision and reasons in their full context, giving appropriate weight to the authority’s view of the situation. A decision may lawfully reject proposed additional sites or uses where they have not been properly assessed or consulted upon, particularly where their inclusion would generate a further inquiry and the issues will shortly be reconsidered under a replacement planning framework.

The claimant sought judicial review under section 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to quash parts of the East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Waste Local Plan, adopted after a public inquiry and approved by the Secretary of State.

She challenged the defendants’ rejection of several inspector’s recommendations, including recommendations concerning additional waste-management sites, wider uses on existing sites, higher recycling and recovery targets, and the treatment of North Quay, Newhaven. She also challenged the decision not to hold a further inquiry into objections to those rejections. The central issues were whether the defendants had acted unlawfully in rejecting the recommendations and whether fairness or the statutory procedure required a second inquiry.

1. Claim dismissed. The defendants’ decisions were within their statutory discretion and were not unlawful.
2. Under section 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the court applies ordinary judicial review principles to a decision whether to hold a further inquiry. Relevant considerations include fairness to objectors, whether the earlier inquiry adequately dealt with the matters raised, whether genuinely new issues arise, whether a further inquiry would provide a material benefit, and whether the delay and expense would be justified. The authority’s view of the general situation is entitled to weight.
3. The relevant considerations do not form a mandatory checklist. The court must examine all the circumstances and read the reasons for refusing a further inquiry together with the reasons for rejecting the inspector’s recommendations. It was unnecessary for the defendants expressly to refer to every consideration identified in Drexfine Holdings Ltd v Cherwell DC.
4. The defendants were entitled to reject recommendations for additional sites and wider waste-management uses because those proposals had not been properly assessed or consulted upon. Their inclusion would have led to a further inquiry and delay. The issues could instead be reconsidered through the Waste Development Framework process, making a second inquiry into the existing plan unnecessary.
5. The rejection of higher recycling and recovery targets was supported by adequate reasons, including unreliable data, monitoring difficulties, the treatment of some commercial and industrial waste at regional or local level, and the imminent review of targets under the new planning framework.
6. The reasons for rejecting the recommendations concerning Sackville Road and North Quay were lawful. The defendants were entitled to rely on conflict with the Brighton and Hove Local Plan, lack of assessment and consultation, and the fact that the inspector’s general point about determining the acceptability of incineration at application stage did not require the recommendations to be accepted.
7. The Secretary of State’s approval could be taken into account, although it did not cure any error of law. It was unnecessary to rely on it because the claim failed on the substantive grounds.