Taylor Wimpey UK Ltd & Anor v Crawley Borough Council

When examining a development plan document for soundness, an inspector must have regard to relevant and recent development-plan policies. A planning decision made in a particular factual and temporal context must not be treated as permanently precluding development if its conclusion depended materially on a changeable assessment of need. A strategy may not adopt a more prescriptive constraint than existing policy or national guidance without addressing the apparent conflict and giving adequate reasons. An inspector’s misunderstanding of the effect of an earlier decision, especially one later quashed, may render the strategy unlawful.

The appellants challenged parts of Crawley Borough Council’s adopted Core Strategy under section 113 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The challenged provisions concerned development in the North East Sector of Crawley, affected by possible future aircraft noise from a second Gatwick runway.

The appellants argued that the strategy failed to take account of West Sussex Structure Plan Policy NE19, improperly treated a May 2007 Secretary of State planning decision as permanently preventing development, and lacked adequate reasons and evidential support. The Secretary of State’s decision had subsequently been quashed by Collins J on a housing-need ground. The central issues were whether the examination inspector had lawfully assessed soundness and accurately understood the earlier decision.

1. The appeal succeeded. The challenged passages in the Core Strategy were quashed in part.
2. The examination inspector failed to have regard to a highly relevant matter: West Sussex Structure Plan Policy NE19. That policy had been adopted after PPG 24, expressly addressed the 60 and 66 dB contours at Gatwick, and had plainly taken the national guidance into account. Its omission was especially material because the impugned objective appeared to impose a more exacting and prescriptive prohibition than the guidance and cut across the Structure Plan policy. The inspector also failed to explain why that objective should be adopted. Grounds 1 and 3 therefore succeeded.
3. The inspector adopted too readily the Secretary of State’s conclusion on the planning application. That decision was a balanced, multi-factor decision in which the assessment of immediate housing need was important and potentially changeable. It did not permanently preclude development until the second-runway issue was resolved. The Core Strategy’s statement that development was effectively precluded until then materially overstated the decision and created an unnecessary and prejudicial obstacle to a later planning application. Ground 2 succeeded.
4. The quashing of the Secretary of State’s decision did not mean that none of its contents could lawfully be treated as a material consideration. Ground 4 therefore added little and was not decided separately. The defect was the inspector’s reliance on an exaggerated account of the earlier decision, which could not justify retaining paragraph 2.7.
5. The order quashed the relevant part of paragraph 2.7 and the words concerning existing or possible future aircraft noise contours of 60 dBA Leq or more in paragraph 11.5. The respondent was ordered to pay the appellants’ costs, with £50,000 paid on account and the balance subject to detailed assessment.

The judgment records a related statutory challenge to the Secretary of State’s planning decision, which Collins J allowed and remitted for redetermination. That earlier decision was not finally determined on the noise and Policy NE19 issue. The present court allowed the challenge to the Core Strategy and quashed the specified passages.