Langley Park School for Girls, R (on the application of) v Bromley London Borough Council

When a local planning authority grants permission, Article 22 requires the decision notice to contain a summary of the authority’s reasons for the grant. The relevant decision-making process may continue after the committee resolves to grant permission and until the notice is issued. Officers may prepare draft reasons after considering the report and committee debate, provided the committee subsequently adopts those reasons publicly.

A possible alternative site or scheme is a potentially material planning consideration, not an automatically material one. Whether it must be considered depends on the particular circumstances. The authority’s decision is an exercise of planning judgment, with which the court will usually interfere only on public-law grounds. An undeveloped concept that has not been shown to be more acceptable in planning terms may properly be given little or no weight.

The claimant governing body challenged by judicial review the planning permission granted by Bromley London Borough Council to the governing body of the adjoining boys’ school for the substantial rebuilding of that school on Metropolitan Open Land.

Two grounds were advanced. First, it was alleged that the summary reasons in the decision notice were not the committee’s actual reasons and therefore failed to comply with Article 22 of the Town and Country Planning (General Development Procedure) (England) Order 1995. Secondly, it was alleged that the Council unlawfully failed to consider an alternative scheme, known as option 1, identified during an earlier feasibility study.

1. Ground 1 failed. Article 22 required the notice to include a summary of the local planning authority’s reasons for the grant. The grant was constituted by the issue of the planning notice, rather than merely by the committee’s earlier resolution. The Council was therefore entitled to formulate its reasons before the decision-making process was complete.
2. After the committee meeting, officers prepared draft reasons having heard the debate and considered the planning officer’s report. The reasons were circulated to the committee, adopted publicly, and no member objected to them. In collective decision-making, comments made during the ebb and flow of debate cannot automatically be treated as the committee’s collective reasons. The adopted reasons were sufficiently connected with the committee’s decision.
3. The decision in R (Wall) v Brighton and Hove City Council [2004] EWHC 2582 (Admin) did not assist the claimant. It concerned an admitted failure to include any summary reasons in the notice and did not establish that reasons must be agreed only at the committee meeting or before the vote.
4. Ground 2 failed. The existence of an alternative scheme may be a material planning consideration, but its materiality depends on the circumstances. A local planning authority may treat an alternative as irrelevant where the application is unobjectionable in planning terms, and the same issue is fact-sensitive where the application has planning disadvantages. The authority’s decision whether to consider an alternative is ordinarily a matter of planning judgment.
5. The proposed option 1 was no more than an idea or concept. It was not a detailed proposal and it had not been demonstrated to be more acceptable in planning terms. The Council was entitled to attach substantial weight to the need for a new school, urgency, financial and educational considerations, and minimising disruption. Even if some consideration of the alternative had been required, it was inevitable that it would have received negligible weight.
6. The claim was dismissed. The court did not determine the academic issue of delay or whether a quashing order would have served a useful purpose.

First-instance judicial review claim. No appellate decision is stated in the judgment.