Midcounties Co-Operative Ltd, R (on the application of) v Wyre Forest District Council

A planning permission must be construed as a whole, including documents expressly incorporated into it. Extrinsic material is admissible only where an ambiguity cannot be resolved from the permission itself.

A condition may permit only immaterial variations outside the statutory application process. An unrestricted power to enlarge authorised development is unlawful, although a severable tailpiece may be excised without quashing the permission.

Draft planning obligations must be disclosed in time for effective public comment. A procedural breach will not ordinarily justify relief where the claimant shows no substantive prejudice. Reasons for granting permission need summarise only the conclusions on the principal issues. A statutory requirement to summarise relevant development-plan policies demands their substance, not merely their titles.

A supermarket operator sought judicial review of planning permission granted for a competing supermarket. It challenged the permitted floorspace, tailpieces allowing variations to two conditions, consultation and registration of a planning obligation, and the authority's consideration of conservation areas, highway safety and air quality. It also alleged that the stated reasons and summary of development-plan policies were legally inadequate.

The central questions were whether the permission authorised or had assessed a materially larger store, whether the conditions unlawfully bypassed statutory planning procedures, and whether the identified procedural and reasoning defects justified quashing the permission.

1. The application was dismissed, subject to excision of part of condition 6. The application documents were expressly incorporated into the permission. Properly construed, the 2,919 square metre limit covered the entire area accessible to the public, while the smaller 2,403 square metre figure represented the sales area within and including the checkouts. The permission neither exceeded the application nor authorised a development materially different from that assessed.

2. The permission had to be construed as a whole. Resort to extrinsic evidence was permissible only if an ambiguity remained after examining the permission and incorporated application. If such evidence were considered, the retail study confirmed the same construction. Courts should be cautious about relying on documents which are neither public nor identified by the permission.

3. The unrestricted tailpiece to condition 6 purported to allow the authority to enlarge the floorspace limits without statutory process. It was unlawful because its language was not confined to immaterial variations. It was linguistically and substantively severable, however, and could be excised while leaving the central floorspace controls intact. Condition 4 was valid because its language permitted only minor variations to drawings with which the development otherwise had to comply strictly.

4. Article 25(3) of the Town and Country Planning (General Development Procedure) Order 1995 required public disclosure of at least one draft and the final version of the proposed planning obligation. The authority breached that duty and the legitimate expectation of proper consultation. Nevertheless, the claimant identified nothing it would have said about the drafting, as distinct from objections already made to the development and published heads of terms. There was no substantive unfairness or prejudice, and the court declined to quash the permission.

5. The authority had sufficiently considered traffic effects on conservation areas, road safety and air quality. Section 72 of the Town and Country Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 made the effect on conservation-area character or appearance obligatory, but did not make every possible facet equally obligatory. The evidence did not show that any material matter had been ignored.

6. The reasons enabled an interested person to understand why permission was granted and how the principal issues were resolved. The list of policy numbers and headings did not satisfy article 22(1) of the Town and Country Planning (GDP) (England) (Amendment) Order, because it did not summarise the policies' substance. That non-prejudicial defect did not justify either quashing or a mandatory order.

not stated in the judgment.