Anderson, R (on the application of) v City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council

Planning conditions imposed after the grant of permission must be construed carefully and narrowly. Details approved under them must be sufficiently clear to permit enforcement and must not alter the substance of the permission.

A further environmental impact assessment may sometimes be required where approval of conditions forms a genuine second stage of a two-stage consent process and the project is then likely to have significantly different environmental effects. Approval of genuinely minor details does not ordinarily create such a second stage.

The claimant sought judicial review of the defendant planning authority’s approval of details relating to conditions attached to permission for waste disposal and quarry restoration at Buck Park Quarry.

She alleged that the details for landscaping, drainage and noise attenuation were insufficient, and that the authority should have required a further environmental statement because the original assessment was more than eight years old and circumstances had changed. The court also considered delay and the appropriate remedy.

1. Condition 5. The submitted Landscape Management Plan did not comply with the requirement to identify existing trees, shrubs and hedgerows. It gave no adequate particulars of established specimen trees, including trees within the part of Buck Park Wood on the site. The approval relating to condition 5 was therefore unlawful.
2. Construction of conditions. Conditions imposed by an inspector must be construed carefully and narrowly. Details approved under them must be sufficiently clear to support enforcement and must remain within the permission and the environmental safeguards fixed by the inspector.
3. Condition 7. A complete specification or wholly definitive drawings were not required. The drainage scheme contained sufficient detail. The plans could reasonably be read together, with the ponds or tanks constructed in the locations shown on the site drainage layout and in accordance with the outline details.
4. Condition 8. The condition was not limited to the visual appearance of noise barriers. Nevertheless, it did not expressly require modelling by reference to BS5228. The recommendations in MPG11 and MPS2 did not make that method mandatory. Nor did condition 8 require the tonal corrections associated with BS4142, since the actual noise levels used were permissible and condition 28 operated independently.
5. Further environmental assessment. Applying Barker [2006] 3 WLR 492, a further assessment could sometimes be required where there was a genuine two-stage consent process, real environmental importance at the second stage, and the project was then likely to have significantly different effects from those previously assessed. The approvals here concerned matters of detail and did not constitute that second stage. The authority was not required to consider a further assessment and, even if required to do so, only one lawful conclusion was possible: that no further assessment was needed.
6. The claim succeeded only on the condition 5 issue. That approval was quashed. Permission was refused or the claim dismissed on the remaining grounds. Delay did not defeat the claim. The defendant was ordered to pay half the claimant’s costs, with no order as to costs for the interested party.

The judgment records that the original planning permission had previously been challenged under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The challenge was rejected by Silber J and that decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal in Smith v Secretary of State for the Environment Transport and the Regions [2003] EWCA Civ 262.

Permission to appeal from the present judgment was refused on all grounds.