Chalfont St Peter Parish Council, R (On the Application Of) v Chiltern District Council

A sustainability appraisal for a development plan must assess all reasonable alternatives at each appropriate stage before adoption. An authority need not assess proposals which it reasonably regards as obvious non-starters or undeliverable, but it must give reasons for rejecting them. A planning authority may rely on the stated policies of another public authority whose cooperation is necessary to deliver an alternative, without independently re-examining the underlying evidence. An inspector’s report must be read as a whole and need not address every submission expressly, provided its reasoning adequately explains the rejection of the principal alternatives and the plan’s soundness.

The claimant sought judicial review under Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, section 113, challenging policy CS6 of the defendant’s adopted Core Strategy insofar as it allocated the Holy Cross Convent site for housing. The claimant alleged inadequate strategic environmental assessment and sustainability appraisal, and contended that the examining inspector reached unlawful conclusions and gave inadequate reasons.

The claimant proposed retaining the site, wholly or partly, for educational or mixed use through a land swap involving the local education authority. The central issues were whether that proposal was a reasonable alternative requiring appraisal, whether the defendant and inspector were entitled to treat it as undeliverable, and whether the inspector’s report adequately explained the decision.

1. Claim dismissed. The claimant’s challenge to policy CS6 failed. The court left consequential orders, including costs, to be agreed.
2. Under sections 19(5) and 20(5) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, read with Article 5 of the Directive and Regulation 12 of the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004, sustainability appraisal must identify, describe and evaluate all reasonable alternatives at the relevant stages of plan preparation. The appraisal must continue through the iterative process until an alternative is rejected and removed, at which point reasons must be given.
3. The requirement does not extend to every conceivable proposal. Applying the approach in Heard v Broadland District Council [2012] EWHC 344, an option may properly be treated as a non-starter where there is ample evidence that it is not deliverable. The defendant was entitled to rely on the consistent policy position of Buckinghamshire, the relevant education authority, that no new school was planned or required. It was not required to investigate the statistical material underlying that policy.
4. The inspector was entitled to conclude that the land swap and related mixed-use proposals were non-deliverable and therefore unsound alternatives. The late Arrowcroft scheme could not affect the examination. The inspector nevertheless considered the further representations and gave the claimant the opportunity to be heard, as required by section 20(6).
5. The inspector’s report had to be read as a whole and without excessive legalism, following South Lakeland District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment [1992] 2 AC 141. Although the report could have explained the fundamental flaw in the claimant’s proposals more expressly, its reasoning was adequate and sufficiently conveyed why the proposals were not reasonable or sound alternatives.