Wildie, R (on the application of) v Wakefield Metropolitan District Council & Anor

A local planning authority granting permission must give an adequate summary of its reasons. Where members depart from a planning officer’s detailed recommendation, the reasons should identify the relevant circumstances, explain why they amount to very special circumstances, and explain the disagreement with the officer’s reasoning. The normal remedy for inadequate reasons is to quash the decision. A declaration or order for further reasons is exceptional. A planning permission may be quashed in part where the valid and invalid elements are not inextricably mixed, but the court must consider what the authority would have done without the invalid element.

The claimant sought judicial review of the defendant council’s decision granting planning permission for a 20-pitch caravan and camping site and a manager’s mobile home in the Green Belt. The planning officer recommended approval of the site but refusal of the residential use. The committee approved both elements, contrary to that recommendation. The claimant alleged inadequate reasons and failure properly to apply Green Belt policy. The central issues were whether the decision notice gave an adequate summary of reasons, what remedy followed, and whether any quashing order should be partial.

1. Permission and Ground 1. Permission to apply for judicial review was granted. The duty under Article 31 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2010 required summary reasons for the grant of permission.
2. Although summary reasons need not reproduce the decision-making process, fuller reasons were required because the committee rejected a planning officer’s detailed recommendation concerning a substantial part of the application. The decision notice did not identify the very special circumstances, explain why they justified development in the Green Belt, or explain why the committee rejected the officer’s reasons. The minutes did not cure those defects and created doubt whether the correct policy test had been applied.
3. The normal remedy for inadequate reasons was to quash the substantive decision. A declaration or an order for further reasons was inappropriate. Unlike Macrae and Prideaux, the claimant continued to challenge the substantive lawfulness of the decision and could not ascertain its basis from the officer’s report. The interested party’s potential business losses were not a sufficiently powerful reason to withhold relief.
4. There was power to quash a planning permission in part. The test was whether the valid part was so inextricably mixed with the invalid part that it could not be saved, including whether the authority would have granted the valid part had it known that the other part was invalid. Here it was not sufficiently clear that permission for the camping site would have been granted without the mobile home. The whole decision was therefore quashed.
5. Ground 2 was sufficiently arguable, but it was unnecessary and inappropriate to determine it after Ground 1 succeeded. The court did not decide the detailed interpretation issues concerning the Green Belt policy.

Not stated in the judgment.