Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, R (on the application of) v The First Secretary of State & Anor

In a planning challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, an inspector’s decision must be read as a whole. A temporary permission is a matter for the decision-maker’s judgment. The guidance requires consideration of such permission where there is a reasonable expectation that suitable sites will become available, but it does not require a time-limited permission where that expectation is absent. Procedural fairness is not infringed where a party is invited to comment on materially new guidance and declines to do so. Planning conditions restricting occupation to named persons and their resident dependants, and requiring restoration when the permitted use ends, may be valid and enforceable.

The claimant local planning authority applied under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to quash an inspector’s decision granting permission for a private gypsy caravan site in the Green Belt.

The challenge alleged procedural unfairness because a new government circular was not followed by a reopened inquiry; misdirection and perversity in rejecting a temporary permission; and invalidity or unenforceability of conditions restricting occupation and requiring restoration of the land.

1. Application dismissed. The inspector’s grant of planning permission was upheld. The claimant was ordered to pay the first defendant’s costs of £6,254. No separate order for the second defendant’s costs was made.
2. The publication of Circular 01/2006 after the inquiry did not make the procedure unfair. The parties were invited to comment and neither requested that the inquiry be reopened. The claimant therefore had a proper opportunity to make representations.
3. The inspector did not misapply the guidance on temporary permissions. The Circular required consideration of a temporary permission where there was a reasonable expectation that new sites would become available at the end of the period. It did not require a time-limited permission where no such expectation existed. The reference to suitable, affordable and acceptable accommodation was consistent with the Circular read as a whole and with Chapman v United Kingdom 2738/95.
4. The decision had to be read as a whole. In earlier paragraphs the inspector had found no certainty that an alternative site would be found within any firm timescale, and that the planning authority had not yet begun the relevant assessment and search. It was therefore open to her to conclude that there was no reasonable expectation of alternative sites becoming available and that a temporary permission was inappropriate. Her conclusion was neither perverse nor Wednesbury unreasonable.
5. The challenge to the occupation condition was withdrawn after attention was drawn to Fawcett Properties Limited v Buckinghamshire County Council [1961] AC 636, in which a reference to dependants in an agricultural condition had been held valid. The restoration condition was not invalid or unenforceable. It could be enforced against the owner or a successor occupier, and the authority could carry out the works and charge the cost to the land if necessary.

First-instance judicial review proceedings under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. No earlier appellate decision is stated in the judgment.