Parker v Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government & Ors

A planning inspector must correctly understand and apply the relevant development-plan policy. A court should not infer an error of construction merely because the inspector accepts a planning judgment contrary to submissions or expert evidence. However, reasons must identify the principal controversial issues and the factors relied upon where, without them, the court cannot tell whether the policy was lawfully applied. A reasons challenge succeeds where the omission causes genuine substantial prejudice and leaves a real doubt about whether the decision-maker considered legally permissible factors.

An adjoining landowner challenged, under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act, an inspector’s decision allowing an appeal against refusal of outline planning permission for development at an angling centre. The Administrative Court dismissed the challenge and refused permission to appeal. This court granted permission on one ground: whether policy EM10 of the Rother District Local Plan had been properly construed and applied.

The policy permitted additional static-caravan or chalet accommodation in the countryside where it significantly improved an existing static-caravan or chalet site, or was essential to a rural enterprise. The central issues were whether the inspector understood the first limb, whether four converted chalet units could constitute an existing site, whether unlawful static-caravan accommodation could be considered, and whether adequate reasons had been given.

1. Appeal allowed. The inspector’s decision was quashed because the reasons did not adequately explain how policy EM10 had been applied.
2. The court rejected the allegation that the inspector had misunderstood the policy. Reading the decision fairly and as a whole, and in light of the parties’ submissions, the inspector must have appreciated that an “existing site” meant an existing static-caravan or chalet site, rather than any developed site. The court applied the approach in South Buckinghamshire DC v Porter (No.2) [2004] UKHL 33, including the need to consider what the inspector regarded as the important planning issues.
3. Four accommodation units created by converting a cowshed could properly be regarded as chalets. Their method of creation did not prevent them from being relevant to whether the land was an existing chalet site. Policy EM10 did not prescribe the number of chalets or static caravans required; that was a matter for the inspector’s judgment, and four chalets could, in principle, provide an adequate evidential basis.
4. The three static caravans could not lawfully be used for accommodation and ought not to have been taken into account. A developer could not properly obtain the benefit of the less demanding first limb by relying on accommodation which could be required to cease. The touring caravans were also excluded by common ground.
5. The inspector’s failure to state whether he relied on the touring caravans, the unlawful static caravans, the chalets, or a combination of them created a real doubt about whether he had directed himself to the legally relevant factors. It could not be assumed that he would have reached the same conclusion on the four chalets alone. The appellant was thereby genuinely and substantially prejudiced, satisfying the reasons standard stated in Porter.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Appeal allowed and the inspector’s decision quashed. Permission to appeal was granted on the policy EM10 ground.
• Administrative Court, Queen’s Bench Division: Keith Lindblom QC, sitting as a deputy judge, rejected the section 288 challenge and refused permission to appeal.
• Planning appeal: A Secretary of State’s inspector allowed the developer’s appeal against refusal of outline planning permission.